Citizenship and Immigration committee  You understand, Jim—I'm sure you do, because you've been in the system long enough—how CIC reports processing times. They report the average processing time. If they only have 10 cases, the average is eight cases; if they have a million cases, the average is 800,000 cases. So really, they're not processing actual processing times; they're saying on average, the cases that we have been processing are taking this long.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, not in the last four years. It has not been first in, first out.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  If everybody is an orange, it's first orange in, first orange out, but they've brought the peaches in front of the oranges, the pears in front of the peaches, the apples...and they haven't even come to all the fruits yet.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Again, they're very public in what they say. Don't forget we deal with cases on an average basis. Every call I get from any client I've ever filed an application for says, “How come it's taking longer and longer?” I have to try to think of a reason. But if you think of the issue that says we're not allowing any more in and we have new people applying, then why are some people getting through so much faster than others?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I represent CAPIC, the largest association of authorized immigration consultants in Canada. Every year our members help tens of thousands of individuals come to Canada, to study, to visit, to live or work. We also assist those inside Canada to exercise their rights before the federal tribunals, such as the IRB and IAD.