Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I dispute the figures that my colleague Barry Devolin provided a little earlier. I have no idea where he got them, and I feel obliged to respond to him. With the help of my colleague Andrew Telegdi, I'd like to provide these figures, for television and also for the minutes of these meetings.
First of all, in the nine years from 1985 to 1993 when the Conservatives were in power, 1,583,000 persons were admitted to Canada as immigrants, an average of 175,947 persons—let's say 176,000 persons—a year, under the Conservative government. If we calculate an average for the 12 years of Liberal rule—that's 12 years compared to 9 years—we get 2,668,000 persons. Of course, there's a difference of three years there. However, the average number of immigrants entering Canada under the Liberal regime was 220,323 a year, a difference in favour of the Liberals. Under the Liberal regime, there were 46,376 more landed immigrants each year than under the Conservative regime.
I'd also like to emphasize another point, with the help of my colleague Andrew Telegdi. It's being said that, under the Liberal government, we didn't achieve our immigration objectives. When you refer to Citizenship and Immigration Canada's website—and that's where my figures also come from—you can see that, in 2000, when we set the objective of taking in between 200,000 and 225,000 persons, we accepted more than 227,000. I won't talk about each year, since I know that the chairman will cut me off. Every year between 2000 and 2005, we exceeded the minimum that we had set, which was either 200,000 or 225,000 persons. Sometimes, we even exceeded the maximum objectives that we had set. In 2005, the objective was to take in between 220,000 and 245,000 persons, and we achieved an immigration rate of 262,191 persons.
I got those figures from Citizenship and Immigration Canada's website. That's not aimed directly at you, Minister, obviously, but I felt we had to have concrete and true figures.