Mr. Coderre, between 1993 and 2005, the government accepted, on average, 222,000 permanent residents, but during some of those years it received over 400,000 applications. During that time, one of the reasons why the number of permanent residents admitted declined may have been related to security clearance problems, I don't know. All I know is that we accept over a quarter million applications a year at present, and with the security agencies, we have the ability to check applications from a national security perspective.
On November 24th, 2011. See this statement in context.