Citizenship and Immigration committee  He did, but we're only meeting the bottom end of the range, so I don't see how the top end of the range is going to be relevant or is going to make any difference at all unless the resources are increased to meet that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That was for the elected SAH representative, so Martin and I and our colleagues on the NGO-government committee met with the minister. We felt that the meeting went really well. We made basically the same recommendations: that the processing be increased, that we get rid of the

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There is a perception that private sponsors are putting forward cases that are family members but not refugees. Therefore, those applications are looked at with suspicion, when in fact people can be refugees and be family members. UNHCR recognizes this, and it's absolutely natura

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm just flipping through to see if I can find the actual number. For 2006, it was around 5,800 persons, which was actually quite a bit lower than previous years. It's been as high as 10,000 persons over the last five or six years.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Maybe I can add a little to that. I think you're looking at--

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Okay. I attribute the difference between the 80% that was cited for UNHCR-referred cases and the 50% for private sponsored cases to a few things. One that we've already mentioned is the length of time it takes to process our cases. UNHCR cases are processed quite quickly; ours ca

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The program can't be responsive. As my colleague was saying to me earlier, nobody can predict three or four years from now where there's going to be a need for resettlement, yet we're submitting applications today. We know there's a need for resettlement today, but we certainly c

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's interesting that you ask about attendance on the committee. On the SAH side, we are elected for a three-year term, and we can go for a second term if we wish. I'm in my fourth year now. On the CIC side, the problem I and my colleagues who have been on the committee before m

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think as far as the committee goes, it's been in existence about 13 years, or something like that, so it's a longstanding thing. Communication over the years has been good. The committee together has achieved a lot of good things. I think recently we have been working on devel

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, I've only been on the committee for three years. We probably hit stumbling blocks from time to time. Overall, I'd say our communication is not bad, but I would certainly like to see it better. We do work a lot on operational issues day to day, but I would certainly like to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm sorry, but I need you to clarify that question because I don't remember speaking about directives for specific regions.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Oh, okay. My colleagues might have to help my memory a little bit. Let's see. We had a communication about the southern Sudanese about a year ago from the department, basically telling us that in the future they didn't see a need for resettlement because of the repatriation tha

Citizenship and Immigration committee  But sponsors will not continue to limit their submissions severely without seeing a stronger commitment from our government and more progress. When we met with Minister Solberg, we requested that CIC commit to processing 9,000 persons per year. Otherwise, even after last year's