Sure. There are a couple of different factors at play. There are a couple of different things that you have to understand. You left out a key group, as well, of people who are already in a third country who have been approved. We also started this Parliament, at the point when I was appointed, where we had initially a commitment we'd made before the last federal election to resettle 20,000 Afghan refugees. We've had to formally increase that commitment beyond the campaign commitment. We've actually implemented and approved additional spaces.
One thing that's really important for people to appreciate is that, when you look at the process, it's a bit different for government-assisted refugees compared with privately sponsored refugees, and it's a little different for the humanitarian cases as compared with the special immigration measures for the people who made a contribution to Canada's mission. One thing they have in common is that I don't sit in my office in Ottawa and say, “There's a group of people right there. Let's fill up the spaces we have available.” We use referral partners for a reason.
On the special immigration measures for people who made a contribution to Canada, we want DND and GAC, which are placed most closely to the people who worked for them, to be able to identify who amongst the people who've applied can qualify for our programs. Similarly when we deal with a private sponsorship group or government-assisted refugees but we have a referral partner, we leave it to those groups to identify the individuals who will be subscribed to a program, typically on the basis of their vulnerability. When we're dealing with spaces we've granted to the UNHCR, for example, and they're ramping up operations in a region, they don't necessarily have the ability to deal with 10,000 people who've already been approved and are waiting for a country to take them. In the case of a traditional refugee resettlement effort, it might look something a little more like that, but when we're responding to a crisis in real time it makes it really challenging.
I made the point earlier that if we just wanted to pick any 40,000 Afghan refugees it would be much easier, because to your point, there have been people who've fled Afghanistan in large numbers for a very long time. We wanted to make sure that we didn't waver on our commitment to help those who've helped us. We've made commitments to the family members of interpreters who were resettled here previously. When we're making a commitment to people who are still in the country, it changes the landscape to a significant degree, but it's important that we continue to work with our referral partners to fill out these programs, which I expect will be done actually quite quickly.