Justice committee  Thank you for that question. On behalf of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, I'm happy to say there were two cases in which we were the litigants, the parties, not just intervenors. I'm very happy to say we have a 100% success rate. One of them was the doctors' case I

Justice committee  I could tell you that the numbers of refugee claimants have been much higher historically than they have been in the last few years. I'm not sure if this is outside the range of what this committee is studying, but I think it's important to say that, yes, Canada can do a lot more

Justice committee  There's no difference. The United States traditionally uses the terminology “asylum seeker”. In French we say demandeur d'asile.

Justice committee  Client demand has fluctuated greatly and, as Maître Valois indicated before, there's been a considerable increase recently as a result of several developments. We expect that the numbers of refugee claimants will be going up, particularly because of what is going on in the United

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  As far as the expedited process is concerned, we used to have a system whereby all claimants could be considered. We would examine the cases to determine whether the likelihood of success was high. Currently, that is done only for three countries, and even then, there are problem

Justice committee  Yes. Mr. Nicholson, I thought it was very interesting that you brought up detention and the costs to the system from not having proper representation. That's indeed a reality in the refugee determination process, the immigration system, because there are people who are detained b

Justice committee  Our clients?

Justice committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. The Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers—otherwise known as CARL, to make it easier—has about 350 members across Canada, consisting of lawyers and law professors, as well as law students. We have chapters in several universities across the coun

Justice committee  Mr. Chair, you would understand too, and I hope Maître Valois doesn't tell anybody in Montreal that I'm saying this, but it has to be said that the refugee law office in Toronto sets the standard. They have budgetary struggles and limitations as well, but they are the backbone in