I'm not entirely sure. A number of policy decisions were made. I know that in the late 1980s and early 1990s Canada was receiving record high numbers of permanent residents. In fact, in 1993, 256,000 permanent residents were received in Canada. So there were high levels of intake and there were apparently adequate resources.
There was a change of government in 1993, and one of the first things that happened was that the number of permanent residents in the subsequent several years was cut fairly dramatically. I think policy decisions were taken with respect to the points system in 2002 that had a significant impact. Of course, there was also no limit to the number of people who could apply, so there was an unlimited demand on the application side; consequently, we saw this massive backlog develop.
What really concerns me is that the processing times went from six months, on average, to over four years, which has put us out of the game of competing for the best and the brightest, so to speak, who seek immigration from developing countries in particular.