Citizenship and Immigration committee  They're not researchers, but we have coordinators for every team of 12 people rendering decisions, and we have...even legals will do some reading of decisions and help us. I hadn't finished, because there was more to it in terms of quality and cohérence décisionnelle. We have special days devoted to a country condition.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, we don't have targets. It's a way of monitoring. It's a way of knowing if something is going awry or maybe some interpretations.... I'm quite satisfied with what we do there.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't have it, but I could certainly give it to you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I was going to say we also have national packages; the research department does research on countries. This research is what is given to everyone in the hearing. There's no information that is not divulged to everyone. The research department on the country condition is always updating international documents that come from Amnesty International or whatever institution.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, we work independently, to keep the independence.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, if the Department of Foreign Affairs published something that's in the public domain, we would definitely....

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't have my statistics to hand, but I will provide them. There was an issue with legal aid. The federal government was negotiating with the province, and for a while it looked like legal aid would not be awarded or granted for refugee claims. It did pick up. We adjusted. We started having staff give briefings to the non-represented, and then the situation was remedied and an arrangement was agreed to.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. But you would need to go back three years. Three years ago, the government allocated $10 million to us, but we had to justify this amount from one year to the next, bearing in mind that we had to deal with the issue of security and the fact that we had quite a sizable backlog.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Certainly. In answer to your question, we had to reduce staff once the $10 million were no longer available. Employees were advised that there was little work, and most of them found work elsewhere. That has not been easy.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have more tools available, thanks to the action plan. We worked on five plans. First, we examined all the research documents that we had and our capacity to address the needs. We examined the stats of the hearing process, in order to see if we could be more efficient. Pursuant to the act, the chairperson may issue guidelines concerning the procedure that applies to hearings or country requirements.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The percentage of rejected claims has not changed over the past three years. It varies between 42 per cent, 44 per cent and 46 per cent. Last year, it was 46 per cent. That is the acceptance rate. I should be able to provide you with the rejection rate.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  A great deal of money is invested. First, I will talk about the three levels that allow us to ensure that we are constantly up to date. We have a cutting-edge legal department, staffed with individuals who have been with us for nearly 15 years. So the whole legal approach has been refined.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Our estimate is that at the border it's about 17%.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. Sorry, at the border it's 50%. But there are three ways to enter; there are also the airports and inland. But if you aggregate the drop in terms of refugees referred to the board, it would be 50% at the border.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, roughly.