I was going to start off with this, so I'll be a little bit disjunctive, but there are some reasons for that. You were talking about refusals. My information, or the statistics I've read with regard to refusals--and I'm referring to the Canadian refusals--is that between 2003 and 2007 about 40% of requests were refused.
That's from 2003 to 2007. Would those numbers be roughly correct? My clock is ticking, so if it takes you a while to look, I'd just say that if my numbers are exaggerated or you don't think they're accurate, you can come back to them later.
One of the general thrusts I'm seeing here is that any change to this legislation is not good because it gives too much power to the minister; I think you've answered that rather well, in that he “may consider” not that he “shall consider”.
You've said in general that it is generally safer to bring back Canadians who are convicted of crimes in foreign lands because we can keep a better eye on them here or because there would be some form of record. Would it not be correct to say that you could correct that very easily by revisiting that transfer agreement and changing Canadian regulatory regimes to say that the record in that country is automatically transferred to this country should the prisoner be transferred? Their record of conviction would then become part of a criminal record in Canada.