I think the biggest factor in relation to your question on why it takes that amount of time is purely the volume of business we do as a department. Each year we get about 17,000 application in the spousal reunification class alone. It's been roughly 17,000 over the last two to three years, or in that ballpark--17,000 to 18,000.
Those are big numbers when you add them on to the volume of business we do across the entire network of immigration. This is just one class. It is a question of just pure volume.