Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm really sorry that I didn't hear all your statements. However, some people in the room know that I sat on the Immigration Committee, where I had the honour of hearing these speeches on undesirable persons on a number of occasions.
For my colleagues, I would point out that we're putting a great deal of emphasis on refugees; we always come back to the refugee question. However, as you are no doubt aware, the board, the IRB, is short of board members. The number of people waiting for decisions is currently increasing. Unfortunately, the government has been immobile for a number of years and is not appointing or renewing the terms of the IRB members quickly. That's a bit of an answer to Mr. Young's question concerning the number of people.
As you are also aware, there have been regulatory changes regarding the borders between Canada and the United States. It's entirely normal, when there is a change to regulations, that there is an increase in the number of applications. People are afraid that the legislation doesn't provide for any transition. These people are also arriving at the borders more quickly than expected. So we have to manage a larger number of newcomers.
I've had the opportunity to visit the places where people are held temporarily, sometimes for a little longer. Action has previously been taken to make the agency aware that pregnant women were being held for long periods of time and that there were a number of deficiencies in that regard, such as access to physicians, access to translators. You are well aware of that situation.
In addition, my colleague spoke about the number of travellers: 97 million travellers; that's enormous. He also added that we're having trouble locating 41,000 individuals or that we've lost all trace of them. It should be pointed that a removal order can be issued against a person for a number of reasons, and that those 41,000 individuals are not necessarily criminals, although some of them are.
According to Minister Day's statement, we are probably right to be concerned about the large number of these individuals because they are harder to find. It's always a challenge to find people when you let them go. On the other hand, most of them aren't criminals, even though they are ineligible.
In those cases, we find people, like students who haven't renewed their permits or who are waiting for a permanent residency decision. Sometimes, the file is lost in Vegreville. In other cases, the person has forgotten to renew his temporary work permit. In the system, there's a human factor that must remain that way. In fact, if we consider the people in the field, whether they be immigration lawyers or people working with refugees, or even the Canadian Bar Association, on the whole, they think you're proceeding with removal too quickly in a number of cases, and they would like to have more time to intervene.
I simply wanted to clarify that point because, based on our understanding of the issue, you have to be aware of all those factors that reflect the complexity of the immigration system.