Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to comment on three different areas. Let me start off by commenting on what the minister feels very boastful about this morning, and that is the reduction in backlogs.
Mr. Chair, as opposed to patting the government on the back, I think it's important that Canadians realize that this minister, unlike any other Minister of Immigration, felt the best way to deal with the backlog was to push the delete button. You don't deal with a backlog by wiping out tens of thousands of applications. I think it's important to ensure that this is on the record. The minister hit the delete button and hundreds of thousands of individuals were deleted. That's how he dealt with the backlog.
Mr. Chair, another way in which he attempts to deal with the backlog is that he puts a freeze on the parents of someone who has come to Canada, and after being in Canada for a number of years, quite often wants to be able to sponsor their parents. In this case, the minister is saying no. We anticipate, and I'd be interested in knowing from the minister at some point, likely not today because of the time constraints, when he's going to take that freeze off parents so they can once again be sponsored.
I want to comment on the citizenship issue. The minister has probably been the worst Minister of Immigration and Citizenship in dealing with the issue of citizenship. The waiting period for a landed resident to get citizenship is unacceptable. We have 338,000 individuals in inventory today who are waiting two-plus years, many of whom, Mr. Chair, could have their residency called into question. It's been estimated that it could range anywhere from 5% to 20% of total applications, where they are having to wait four, five, six-plus years in order to be able to get their citizenship. It's almost as if this particular minister has completely ignored the citizenship portion of his file.
Mr. Chair, yes, he put $40 million into this budget but it doesn't really say that much, when you take a look at it. When the Liberal government was last in office we saw that—