The selection criteria today are still in the point system, but the factors of selection have changed over the years. I think the most fundamental change, which I don't think was a good one, was the tremendous emphasis given to education as opposed to skills and occupations. It means, in effect, that a lot of highly skilled tradesmen can't get into Canada because they simply don't make the points. On the other hand, we're getting very large numbers of highly schooled academic people who can't find jobs when they get here. That would be one change that I would certainly recommend.
The other, and I think it's what this proposed regulation addresses, is that you have to have a system to control the numbers and the flow. Unless you do that, you're going to cause a great deal of hardship, and the building up of backlogs.
The original selection criteria did have a thermostat built in that slowed the movement down when the government wanted it slowed down and stepped it up when the government wanted it to go ahead. That mechanism is missing under the 2001 legislation. I said it was recognized by the government a year later. They tried to fix it by making the backlog people meet higher criteria than they had originally, and the courts threw that out.