Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Vaughan, the official opposition immigration critic and a distinguished member of the House, for addressing this issue with a great degree of responsibility and openness to the need for reform and for having been the first member of this place to raise the need for reform 18 months ago.
He has asked a lot of very substantive questions. I am not sure that I can give him an adequate detailed answer in the moments available, but my general answer to all four questions is, yes. The government is disposed to having a serious dialogue on this at committee to consider and to accept reasonable amendments as long as they meet the objective of a system that is both fast and fair. I think the broad consensus is that we need to get to that.
With respect to the timelines, we propose in the bill an eight day triage interview so that claimants can directly give to a highly trained public servant at the IRB the nature of their claim and the basic facts about their claim without prejudice to the initial hearing that they will have, on average, some 60 days subsequent.
These timelines are actually longer than in many other western countries and their asylum systems. I should also mention that many other countries, like the United Kingdom and the United States, detain nearly 100% of asylum claimants upon arrival. We are not proposing to do that or to increase the use of detention in our system.
However, with respect to timelines, I am open to arguments on this point but I believe that it is essential. If we want to remove the incentive from the tens of thousands of false claims made in the country, the system must be fast. People know they cannot stay in Canada for years and use our public resources if they are not bona fide claimants, which is why I will make an argument at committee that we need to maintain the ambitious timelines.
I look forward to giving the member a very detailed explanation at committee of the independence and the nature of the hiring, training and pay levels that we anticipate for the independent public service decision makers at the refugee protection division of the IRB. I would also invite the member to call before the committee the chairman of the IRB who could give him details on this issue.
With respect to the transparency for the designation of safe countries and the criteria, I would like to signal our openness to reasonable amendments on that point in particular. I would be quite prepared to share with the committee our draft regulations that will frame the process for designating safe countries. I would also be prepared to accept an amendment at committee that clearly states in the legislation what the criteria is for the designation of safe countries.