There is one question or issue I'd like to put on the table that possibly the minister or his staff could address when they're here.
I'm the furthest thing from an expert on this department or on the processes that this department administers, but what I do know anecdotally is that there's a sense that this department, from an administrative efficiency point of view, doesn't do a great job. In my riding office, you know, my staff will say some departments we deal with seem to do a good job and turn things around quickly, and other departments seem to be very slow, and people wait for long periods of time, never knowing why.
So I don't expect an answer today, but I would appreciate it if the minister or his officials would talk to us a little bit about whether they've done benchmarking in their department, if they have some standards they try to meet in terms of how long it ought to take to process a particular type of application.
Secondly, maybe they could explain to us why it may be difficult for them sometimes to deal with things in an expeditious way. I do understand that there probably are some good reasons, but I'd just like to know the answer to that question. People ask me why it takes three years sometimes to get an answer to something that it would seem should only take a matter of hours of actual consideration.