Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Fleury, for your presentation.
I just have a couple of questions. I'm looking at the numbers and the graphs and trying to determine the trend of what is shaping up in Canada.
Before I say anything, I must congratulate you on your job of getting the backlog down from the 52,100 that it was in 2002 to the 20,000 where it stands today.
The question I have is on the number of claims that are being referred. Obviously, as the years go by, the number of actual refugee claimants coming into Canada has decreased. If you combine that with a $10 million increase in budget, and we start having an effective eating into the backlog in a consistent way, it appears that if you keep on track the way you are going, we are probably two to three years away from a just-in-time system, where the refugee claims are being processed as quickly as they are coming in, which I think is a positive sign.
In the second line, where it says “claims finalized”, where it seems to have been dropping from 45,000 to 35,000 to 25,000, I'm wondering why the number of claims we process in Canada is decreasing. Are there fewer refugees in the world or are there fewer refugees coming to Canada?