Thank you.
I have to congratulate you, Madam Minister. You've picked up some friends. At the finance committee yesterday the Liberal MPs agreed with the Conservatives to fast-track Bill C-50, and at the Liberal-dominated Senate, you got it fast-tracked again. We haven't even finished dealing with Bill C-50 here in the House of Commons, and right now, as we speak, the Senate is considering Bill C-50. It's quite amazing that you found these Liberal friends, even though they said they were against the bill. Having said that, I don't know how you managed to do it, but it's quite amazing.
The numbers don't fit. The budget in front of us says the main estimates this year are for $164,860,000 for the immigration program, which is a drop from last year of $18.9 million. In the ads you've been saying it's going to be over $100 million and it's going to deal with the backlog, etc. In your presentation you said there is $8 million for this year. I can't square that number, because what I'm noticing is that the immigration program will have to cope with a significant reduction in financial resources, a cut of 32% over two years. On top of that, I saw that in 2007 there was a decrease of another $2.6 million due to “cost efficiency savings”, so last year there were cuts already, and there are more cuts coming, cuts of 32%.
If there are fewer resources for the immigration department, that goes completely contrary to and in a different direction from what the ad seems to be saying, which is that there will be millions of dollars invested in reducing the backlog. Can you explain that?