Citizenship and Immigration committee  You are right. The model in Quebec differs from that in the rest of Canada. There is a very specific funding model in the Canada–Quebec accord. It relates to overall rates of government spending minus debt servicing. Then there's a formula for numbers of non-francophone immigrants who arrive in Quebec.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For Quebec, as I recall off the top of my head, for the last year it was a little over $600 million.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Our focus right now is on phases one and two of good technical debt reduction so that our system will be able to do some of the things we've done over the last year. Frankly, I think we've done more over the past year with our system than we thought we could, which is great news.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For settlement services in Quebec, the member is absolutely right: settlement services in Quebec are the responsibility of the Government of Quebec, and they are funded under the agreement from the Canada–Quebec accord. The funding formula under the Canada–Quebec accord for these services is related to the overall rate of spending of the Government of Canada minus debt service charges.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We are so excited to have been given a big plug in budget 2021 to finish the work on our digital platform modernization. It's in three phases. We had secure funding for the first two phases, which are really about technical debt reduction on our system, which tends to break a lot, and better disaster recovery on our system.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, let me first ask the member if my mother put him up to that question. We always move resources around in the department. Frankly, we want to be able to do that better and more seamlessly. Moving away from a paper-based system to a proper modern digital system lets us do that, so that we don't have pockets of people who don't have a ton to do versus people who are really overworked, and we're able to move those applications seamlessly.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's hard for me to comment on a specific application, Madam Chair. We don't tend to process private sponsorship applications separately. We tend to look at the application as a whole. That's our practice. There may be issues where clearance may come back for one individual more quickly than the other, which would cause us to take a look at it that way.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. Madam Chair, we're happy to share things. Yes, some provinces do better than others. When we start with the provincial nominee program, I think—if I may make a suggestion, Madam Chair—that it would be worth looking at what Manitoba has done under its provincial nominee program.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I wish I could have a more positive answer for you, Madam Chair. We've made a lot of progress, but we are not back to pre-pandemic processing times—not yet. We continue to work away on that. We've had good success in working down the number of applications that we have and processing some of them.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Each case is different. I'm sorry about this case, and for the misunderstandings that were there. Being able to put it back in the queue is something that we can certainly look into because I think you raise a good point around fairness.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for your suggestion. I think it is worth considering. We've done quite a bit of analytical work in looking at regional trends. We see some positive things and some things where we still think we need work to be able to do this. Looking back on regionalization trends, here's one of the things that we see as positive.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not aware of studies per se, but we can look into it. Second, I think you make a really important point for us on the availability of our services en français hors Québec. For our settlement services, we need to be able to run quality settlement services in French outside of Quebec for immigrants who are coming to Canada and want to live and work in French and support the vitality of francophone minority communities outside of Quebec.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  First of all, I want to make it clear that this is not the aim of the program at all. We have worked with and spoken to our colleagues in Quebec who have raised concerns around this. We're working closely with them. The Government of Quebec has space to increase its own programs in this regard.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for your question and your suggestion, which I think is excellent. We don't have a programme that specifically meets this criterion, but we do have good settlement programmes. We work closely with our service provider organizations. However, there are other programs within the Government of Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  —job opportunity. It's about celebrating what's there. It's exactly what you said. More and more, we find that our settlement agencies are taking that on as part of their responsibilities in the establishment programs or the settlement programs that they give.