Citizenship and Immigration committee  We processed or finalized 46,000 applications for spousal in 2020. This year, in 2021, since the first of January, we have processed about 10,000. We think we're really on track to being able to hit our levels targets and to—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll repeat what the minister said. We are soberly aware of the risks of doing business in China.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We are similar to our other Five Eyes partners—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm happy to say we've put a priority on people who are either in Canada or able to travel to Canada, given the current restrictions. For us, in practical terms, that's meant things like the Canada experience class draw under express entry, out of which over 90% of individuals are in Canada and working.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Simply participating and being charged with participating in a peaceful protest would not be grounds for us to reject an application in and of itself, so the answer to that is no. I'm happy to report that student applications in particular are up in Hong Kong, and we are encouraged by that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  If I may, finally we have a new immigration program manager in New Delhi, and I am very confident in his ability to get things back on track.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I have many concerns about operating in this pandemic environment. My first concern would be how long the border will remain closed, because this affects a number of our PR applicants in particular. These are people whose applications have been processed since March 18, 2020, and the border remains closed.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm happy to provide an update on that. This is a good news story, Madam Chair. Last fall and last summer we tackled two things. One was how we could better digitize applications that were coming in. We contracted a company called Iron Mountain to come in and pick up those files and help us to digitize them and promote them in our network so that people could continue to work safely at home while processing those files in a timely manner.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, we can talk about our processing capacity and—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, we'd be happy to.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have worked hard to try to make sure we have cleaned up, as you would say, things in our mailroom and to make sure there is an acknowledgement of receipt for all our applications, and to make sure those applications are promoted into GCMS. We have focused on a number of different categories including spousal, and we are in the process of dealing with citizenship and PR card renewals now.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  If I could add to that, Madam Chair, the portal we have put in place for photographs, for people to be able to upload photographs in a secure way for us and for us to verify that, has been an enormous help on PR card issuance.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We do, but I would track it in two ways. If there are applications we haven't opened yet, it's difficult for us to say, but we can certainly talk about the numbers in the system. Mr. Mills.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for the question. Thank you for your nice comments too. First I want to say a couple of things about India. Because of country conditions, our visa application centres were closed for most of 2020—from March on in 2020—and this had a significant impact on our business.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can say with confidence that we processed 46,000 spouses, partners and dependent children applications in 2020. I'm happy to say that since the beginning of this year we have processed close to 10,000—