Credible and trustworthy information is essential to good decision-making. This article examines how Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board has responded to legal requirements for country of origin and related information. The new two-stage procedure is described, which focuses on informal, oral hearings, where the technical rules of evidence do not apply. In this context, what counts is the value of the evidence presented. The Immigration and Refugee Board has therefore set up a Documentation Centre, to be the basic resource on refugee, human rights and migration matters; it is open to the public, and to all parties in the refugee process. The IRBDC aims to provide relevant historical material, particularly through its country profiles; chronologies of significant events; and current information on political, ethnic and religious groups, and on law and practice. Its role is to provide authoritative, not expert testimony, with an emphasis on objective analysis. Only identified, publicly available and verifiable sources are used, such as traditional human rights monitors, including media, government and non-government sources. The IRBDC has established standards for evaluation and use; uses a computerized system and international standards on terminology, formatting, indexing and cataloguing; and tries to avoid duplication, wherever possible, by close involvement with networking. © 1989 Oxford University Press.

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