Madam Speaker, the member is wrong. When the Paul Martin government was defeated in 2006 and a new Conservative government took over, it took a few years to realize that, in fact, there was a six million to eight million application backlog created by previous Liberal governments.
At that time, the decision was made to reset the system to zero, because there was no way to fix it. Liberal governments, from the 1990s to the early 2000s, had basically broken the immigration system, like they have broken the immigration system today.
The decision was taken to return people's money and their applications, to restart the system at zero. That was their fault.
Let us talk numbers. I have the numbers for 2015. In 2015, according to IRCC, study permits took 31 days to process. Work permits took 42 days to process. Temporary resident visas took 13 days to process.
In April 2023, study permits took 88 days to process. Work permits took 62 days to process. Temporary resident visas took 72 days to process. Those are bigger numbers than the first ones.