I appreciate that the committee is going to do this. I think it's long overdue.
I've been in this business for 18 years, working with the department. In the 1990s, when Barbara McDougall was the minister, things moved more quickly. It was more efficient, and the numbers being processed were higher. The financial cutbacks in the mid-1990s and the number of staff have never been restored.
Another issue, from my perspective, is that I see glitches and inefficiencies in the system. I think you keep asking the people who are responsible for the system, which is the bureaucracy within CIC in Ottawa, to repair something they have created. This doesn't work very well.
I think the committee should be recommending some external audit of the system to get some efficiency experts in to take a look at some of the processes of the department to see whether it can be sped up at an affordable cost--without necessarily changing the system, particularly, but making it more efficient. To ask the people who have created the system to do this I think is spitting into the wind.