Thank you.
If I may, I will share my time with Ms. Faille.
I'm very happy to meet you Ms. Fraser, as well as the members of your team. You are someone we have been listening to very carefully in recent years. I have a great deal of admiration for the work you have accomplished.
After the last policy statement made by the preceding government, we saw a number of embassies close, including some in Africa. Is it possible for you to assess the impact of those closures? What happened to applications made to those embassies, applications that were transferred to other service centres? Did those additional applications burden their processing system? Was this a factor that discouraged people? Did a number of applicants withdraw their applications, given the place where they were being sent, the political situation, conflicts at the time and the more difficult economic situation in those countries? Did the closures have a negative impact on applications? Where did those applications find themselves routed? Was there an impact on delivery?
Applications were routed to Gabon and Cameroon, for example. We mentioned Abidjan. During today's question period, a colleague noted that applications from Lebanese sources had been routed to Syria. Were more staff assigned to process those applications? Are there resources to accelerate the process? If so, does that not make the existing structure more cumbersome?