Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for the question. Both refugee claimants and refugees work and contribute to our society. This is a well-documented fact. With regard to refugees especially, there has been research conducted—not by me, but by many of my colleagues—that shows that refugees very quickly become productive members of our society.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's correct, yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's one of the questions I asked my research participants. I interviewed almost 70 research participants in three provinces. That was one of the questions I was interested in. Many of those participants told us there should be a balance. The timeline before the adoption of the refugee reform in 2012 was almost 18 months for a refugee claim to have a final decision.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We're fortunate because we have developed, with some glitches, a well-functioning refugee system, and I refer to the Immigration and Refugee Board. There is a wealth of knowledge and expertise within the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada in terms of processing the refugee claims made here.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  First of all, because the question refers to the previous questions, rescinding the safe third country agreement would be the right thing to do. We have many other problems in terms of measuring undocumented migration in Canada. We don't have any research and we don't have any data.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I absolutely do think so, yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's correct.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would believe so, yes. It's a bilateral agreement, and there is a clause, as you mentioned, that allows Canada to either suspend or rescind.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you so much for this question. I think that should be taken off the table. I don't think it is the right decision in this case. We've seen over the last years how unproductive this safe third country agreement is, and it's extremely costly and difficult to enforce. It creates more irregular or undocumented migration in Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. This is again a new measure. We haven't implemented a designated country of origin clause or safe country of origin notion in our refugee system, whereas this notion has been implemented in European countries since the 1980s. It's proven extremely unproductive and costly in Europe.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  This agreement has been in effect since 2004. There were irregular border crossings before Donald Trump was elected, but they have increased considerably since he took office. This shows how counterproductive the agreement is. There is a crisis because the government south of the border has an ideology that is clearly opposed to refugees, proving how much intolerant regimes can increase the flow of asylum seekers.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are in fact agreements in the European Union, and all EU members have declared themselves safe countries. That is the basic principle of the Canada-U.S. agreement, but it does not work at all in the European Union.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They have something called the Dublin system, which has been in effect for two decades. It does not work because it is very expensive and counterproductive.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There is a big debate about that. It is difficult to compare Canada and the European Union though because I think our system is much more humanitarian and we are geographically more protected than the European Union.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for your question. You raise some very important points. As to whether or not there is a crisis, I will say both yes and no. While processing times for asylum seekers have improved, the election of President Trump in the United States has led to an increase in the number of irregular border crossings.