Citizenship and Immigration committee  My suggestion is if you're going to have a safe country list, rather than using it to take away appeal rights from everybody who's a member of that country, you could say we're going to prioritize those claims and hear them first because suspicions are attached. Not everybody's going to like this one, but I think that's one way you could improve the consequences of being a listed country.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Who's that question directed to?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Clearly, something like that is contemplated by the way the regulations are worded. The problem that exists here, and Ms. Houle talked about it, is that you've got a provision that would take away rights that is not controlled by legislation, but it's a cabinet process. That's the weakness.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My concern about a humanitarian claim is that you often look at the totality of the circumstances. You look at the risk of hardship, which has now come to be the accepted definition of what a humanitarian claim is all about. It's what officers are mandated to consider. It's undue, undeserved, or disproportionate hardship if they are returned to their country of origin.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, as I said, I can see that if you have an effective second stage, the RAD, the Refugee Appeal Division, would address the concerns we have. It's why we have the PRRA in the first place. It's supposed to catch mistakes at the first level, and you have something to catch those.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In the current system you have the one single determination. It's luck of the draw as to whether a board member is having a good day or a bad day. I wish they were all highly competent, but frankly, they're not. After that, if you're unsuccessful, you can languish in the system for years before you finally get in.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, I want to go back to what I said earlier, because I don't want to put too much emphasis on it. The reforms will help if you have a properly resourced system to work with them, but it's the properly resourced system that has been the weakness of our process. For good economic reasons, we've had cutbacks all around.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In its present form, I can only say it's scary. I'm sorry. We don't have any control over who gets listed and who doesn't, and we don't know if it's going to be a political process. It could be any government making these decisions. Who knows what we're going to have? I don't like that very much.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sir, I add my concerns to those of the Bar Association. I've read their brief. They have great concerns that at the very least it would result in a great deal of litigation. I think if you look at the Singh decision, which resulted in the creation of our existing system, there's a real concern here that this wouldn't pass the tests that were in the Singh decision.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Hence the sweater. Yes, I'm in Calgary. I'm conscious of the fact that there are probably some westerners out there, people who'd like to cheer the Canucks tonight, so we'll try not to drag it out. My name is Michael Greene. I'm a practising immigration lawyer in Calgary. I have been practising law since 1984 and immigration law since 1987.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I want you to know that I'm a lifelong Habs fan, and I'm quite happy to be cheering for the Habs right now.