Yes, thank you. Generally, when a sponsor wants to submit an undertaking, then we must meet the criteria. One of the criteria is that we show that we have all the funds available, that we can take financial responsibility at least for one year, and in some special cases for two or three years, for the newcomer upon arrival. Even in the program we bring these people in as landed immigrants, and they are able to work, and I'm very happy to see that in most of our SAHs, 70% to 80% of the people become taxpayers within a year or even less. Still, this money has to be put aside, and we must make sure that we meet this CIC criteria.
There is public data that says that once I submit a sponsorship application for one single individual, I am liable for $9,500. For a couple, it's $15,200. So basically these funds are frozen and waiting, because once we submit a case, we have to put this money aside, and we cannot use it for anything else, because you never know when the refugee will come. There is not even an estimated time when the person will be here, so we must be ready.
This causes a huge problem in the system, that all our human resources are committed, and all our funds are committed to this. We take it very seriously. It's very unusual to have a default or breakdown through a fault of the sponsor. So I think this commitment makes it very hard for us when there is an average processing time of three or four years.