It was a model. It was small-scale. We committed in the 25th anniversary year of sponsorship to taking 25 cases that were referred by this office as a way of honouring the beginnings of the program.
We were able to do that. We were receiving numbers of cases from both Kenya and Bogota; hence I had very good relationships at that time with the visa officers. We took them in numbers of six or seven at a time. We matched very carefully and appropriately across Canada. We had community profiles matched to refugee profiles. We were documenting it and evaluating it, as I understood the CIC was.
We had some worries that we might lose everyone to secondary migration and wondered how we would handle that. That proved not to be the case, actually. We did lose one or two. We had some medical problems that weren't noted in the profile, but it was a wonderful program, and it whetted the appetite. People just came out of the woodwork to help.
I do remember checking with some colleagues in the department about this time a year ago, before we did a promotional piece in our in-house magazine, our observer mandate, stuff like that.
Can this continue? I was assured it could continue. I put the campaign out and was greeted with all these wonderful applications in the fall. I cannot get any other visa-office-referred cases. And in our church it's getting critical. We have many caught in the backlog. We now have this surge forward. I can't offer any visa-office-referred cases, and frankly, we're looking at it and wondering why we should be investing resources. This isn't a good use of our time. We should move on.
I have been involved in the program since 1979, as has Ed. I'm deeply committed to it, but if my supervisor says there's nothing there to commit to, I have to move on.