I'll go first, if that's okay.
It strikes me that the government must have been aware that there's a big problem. Clearly, we've been saying it, all of us. The practitioners, for years, have been complaining about the ever-increasing backlog. So I believe the government was made aware that there is a problem, and then, I suppose, they asked the officials to provide a solution.
Now, if you take my remarks, I believe that to a very large extent the officials are the ones who were responsible for this. I find it really hard to understand how it could be that in six years they could allow a backlog to go from zero to 900,000. It's unbelievable. But having created this problem, I think they have to propose a solution.
To admit that they already had the powers to correct the problem years ago and didn't take action is politically embarrassing, so they have to suggest that they need new powers--when in fact most of the powers they say they need, they already had. The one new power they are seeking, which is the power to retroactively change everything, in my view eliminates all accountability. What it ultimately does is it means, “Well, if we make mistakes, we can eliminate all the mistakes by wiping out all the applications.”
So that's my explanation. I just think this mess has been allowed to grow over years and years. Now it's difficult to admit that we've allowed this mess to grow. We have to try to justify it by saying we have this crisis and we need urgent powers, when in fact they already had the powers. They could have done all of these things years ago but chose not to.