I cannot comment on the bill, and, to be honest, I am not very familiar with it either. But I can say that there are different possibilities. Historically, Canada's immigration policy has always contained ways to manage the volume of applications received. Over the years, legislative and administrative priorities have been established to deal with some cases more quickly. For example, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration has been trying for years to encourage family reunification by giving priority to applications from spouses. It tries to deal with most of those cases in six months or less. That decision was made in order to give priority to one group over another.
I invite the committee to look back to its work in 2002. The problem of the backlog and the difficult choices is not new. My first appearance before the committee dealt with this matter. Let me read you this:
“Our current immigration program has been described as a fully loaded airplane for which we keep selling tickets.”
It was the committee that wrote that in 2002. Further on, it says that, based on certain principles, it was probably going to have to make choices in selecting immigrants, in saying who can come and who cannot. So this is not a new problem, it is a problem that existed then and that has always existed. Other countries are dealing with it too.