Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, and I can give you some examples of the kind of reading we do, like the texts from Human Rights Watch.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chairman, I have a brief comment. If I have a very specific question from a claimant from a given country or about a given subject, I will make sure that I have the information before making a final decision on any file. If you tell me that there was a demonstration in a ci

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, Mr. Chairman. I did not get in touch with people from the Algerian community in Montreal. My information was essentially gathered from reading about Algeria, in various texts and magazines, like Jeune Afrique, where the Algerian issue is regularly discussed. However, you unde

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No. Mr. Chairman, the office functions without any direct contact with members of the communities that we deal with. I think that we must stay away from heated debates about any given country. It is preferable to get our information from academic sources or—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No. Somalia is not among the countries for which I have been responsible for the past eight years.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In fact, in the past, I have had a few files from Egypt.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  To follow up on your statements, sir, let me say that the file is finalized, which means that I have made a decision. After that, the individual is free to request a judicial review of my decision by the Federal Court. In addition, there are humanitarian factors like the pre-remo

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chairman, let me say that the benefit of the doubt still exists, even if there is only one member sitting. If we do not have enough elements to make a clear, positive or negative decision and if we have some doubts about the claimant, one member or two members can grant him t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I will answer the member's first question. Our workload in Montreal is 16 cases a month. That is the number of cases we must hear each month. There may be postponements or sometimes some cases are more complicated. Then it becomes difficult to give an exact figure, but, generally

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In answer to the member's question, Mr. Chairman, I would like to add that I have worked on Middle East cases for quite some time, more specifically those from North Africa. In Montreal, we assigned cases from North Africa and the Middle East to the same team. At the time, I was

Citizenship and Immigration committee  When I spoke about delays, Mr. Chairman, I was referring to the delay between the time when a person arrives in the country and submits his or her claim and the delay until the claim is ready to be heard. Of course, the number of members of the board vary. Some leave, and others

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In my interview in 1998, there were some simulation exercises. There was an oral interview and a written examination. I assume the members of the panel used a grid to analyze our answers and decided that we were acceptable candidates, because we got the position. That is the only

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chairman, to answer the very specific question that has been asked, I must say that we—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  From time to time training is provided to members who wish to improve one aspect of their work, such as information seeking. We are taught how to use research tools such as the Internet. We have received training on research using computer systems, on how to find information on t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As far as I'm concerned, I have never been asked to improve any aspect of my competencies. I cannot answer for my colleagues, but I personally have never been asked specifically to improve such and such an aspect of my competency standards.