Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thought I would take the unique opportunity to express the official opposition's position on levels after my friends the Conservatives and the minister have mis-characterized what our position is, because I think it's important.
For the last ten years, we've received an average of 400,000 applications a year. The government sets the level of how many of those it is going to admit. The previous government to the Conservatives accepted about 220,000 and brought in, I understand, a law that obligated the CIC officials to process every application to final decision. The current government raised those levels. They raised them 14% to take in an average of 250,000 a year.
Last year, of course, the government accepted 280,000 admissions, which is 0.8% of population. I guess the government considered it prudent to accept 0.8% of population last year. So the official opposition's position is that we should be looking at approaching 1% of population as one tool in the toolbox to maybe get a better balance between the applications and the number of admissions, so that we don't have this perpetual, increasing backlog.
It's the New Democratic Party's position that there are a number of tools in the toolbox that we can look at. I think Mr. Kurland quite aptly said that maybe we can be looking at caps in some categories, but I'm wondering if both of you can have some comment on whether you agree with the minister, who seems to think that the only tool in the toolbox for dealing with backlog is to cap applications. I'd like to talk about other policy options, like a prudent increase to levels as well as maybe creative ideas like perhaps implementing a ten-year multiple entry visa for parents, to take people out of the queue for citizenship, which I'm going to ask Mr. Kurland about in a moment. I'll talk about that in a second.
Do any of you have some comments on that position?