Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I know I'm not as good looking as Madame Faille, so I can see why you overlooked me, but thank you anyway.
I want to start out by saying that I've been a member of Parliament now almost 10 years. It's hard to imagine, the time has gone so quickly. I think I have the scars to prove it, although I might not look like I've been here for 10 years. But I've continuously seen the problems get worse in immigration, from the time I came here to now. I think everyone around the table here wants to see improvements, but I think we've hit it on the head, and I think about what Jim said when it came to coming up with criteria, maybe, for immigration officers—and, Heather, you just spoke about the sensitivity when it comes to CIC officials abroad.
When we are dealing with refusals that come to our offices—often when you have tight criteria in place for officers, it seems that they can use those almost as an excuse to check and say no, for whatever reason. I almost think we need to deal with the sensitivity training side that you're talking about, to try to deal with opening up the attitudes or the changing of attitudes of some of the CIC officers. I think you've hit it on the head when you say we need to take a leadership role in working with settlement groups and others to be able to deal directly with some of these groups. That's something we've started to do a little bit with some of the new funding that came out for settlement agencies in the last budget, but there needs to be, obviously, more done on that basis.
Specifically, when it comes to these high refusal rates of private sponsorships from sponsorship agreement holders versus a government-assisted refugee program, I would like to hear from you why you think that is. It might be an issue of resources. It might be an issue that—I think, Sarah, you mentioned it when you mentioned the issue of non-skilled workers and how they've helped to build this country—there almost seems to be a barrier for those particular types of people. That also may be something tied into the refusal rates.
Can you clarify that particular issue, of how you see the refusal rates between those two areas?