Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, and welcome to our committee. You said that there is a labour shortage. That is quite clear. Ms. Pohlman stresses the fact that the backlog must be reduced. There are about 900,000 applications on the waiting list. Yesterday, when the minister and her deputy minister appeared, it was clearly established that the number of applications that will be settled as a result of this bill will not increase.
The main objective of the bill is to establish a list of people whose applications are going to be considered as a priority. This is mainly what is causing such turmoil in the whole immigration system. It would be much better to rely on a good points system. A points system is important, because it evaluates not only a person's technical side, but also his value as a person who has to adapt to our country. This aspect will hardly be considered. Instead, we are going to find out whether he is a plumber or an electrician. If so, we will accept him. It almost comes down to making temporary workers into immigrants.
Rushing headlong towards this system is preventing us from building the nation we want. We are dealing with it as a labour problem, one that we are going to solve by accepting people as citizens without due consideration, and having to live with them for the rest of our lives.
What do you think?