Mr. Speaker, there have always been backlogs but between 2001 and 2005, the backlog was accumulating because of 9/11. At that time, the former Liberal government hired a lot more officers and brought the backlog down to 20,000, which was much smaller. When there is a backlog, hire more workers. That is one way to deal with it.
Fundamentally, there needs to be some minor changes too, but one of the problems is the back end. It is not the front end, who gets accepted, who does not get accepted and who is rejected. It is the back end. The Canada Border Services Agency, during that period, was taking a huge amount of time to find some of the failed claimants. In fact, the Auditor General said in a report that they did not even know where some of these folks had gone to, and that they were detaining eight people in a room that was only fit for one person. One of the reasons there is a backlog is the back end. It is not just the front end.
One of the key problems regarding safe countries, is that we can internally have a safe country list but to deny individuals of their right to appeal because they are from one of those countries is a fundamental problem. I believe that each individual case of refugee determination, when a person is seeking asylum, must be seen on its own merits. Each refugee claimant should have equal rights. There really should not be two classes of claimants: one for people who come from a certain country and another for those from a different country. For example, if people are gay or lesbian, they could face the same kind of persecution.