If I may, I'd like to take issue with some of those points. Some I will acknowledge. Yes, we do have challenges, no question. The single biggest challenge at the moment is the backlog we inherited from the previous government. It was allowed to balloon. We're looking at ways to address it in the longer term.
In the meantime, we're being successful at finding ways to continue to meet the labour market needs. We've invested extra money in the temporary foreign worker program. We're working with the provinces to meet their regional needs, which is extremely important. We've invested $1.3 billion in settlement funding, because there is no point in bringing all these people here if we don't help them adapt to this new environment.
The previous government kept those levels frozen for 10 years. Think about anything else where a price or an individual's salary has been frozen for 10 years. I call that a starving of resources, and that's one of the reasons the backlog was allowed to grow so high, because the resources weren't put to it.
Our government has been investing--in the FCRO to help people get to work, in temporary foreign workers. In terms of the foreign credentials referral office, its role is not and has never been to get people accredited. It's to help people find out how and where to get accredited. The accreditation process is part of the provincially licensed regulatory bodies.
I believe that our leadership role is to help people, particularly before they even get here, navigate through the labyrinth that exists in finding where and how to get their credentials assessed, so that having got them assessed before they even come here, they can use that time to upgrade their skills to close the gap between their skills and Canadian standards.