As I mentioned, the budget for the ministry has increased significantly over the past three years to over $1.3 billion in total. The largest portion of that increase has been a 219% increase in funding for settlement services. I was recently in Vancouver, in December of last year, to announce our allocations for 2009 for settlement services, which see yet another increase, a total increase of $1.4 billion over four years.
It is a challenge, there's no doubt about it, for us to manage the business lines of immigration with our current budget, but our officials are doing their best to be innovative. We continue to have huge demand. One of the problems of Canada's immigration system is that we have more demand than we can possibly satisfy in any given year. But this means there's real operational stress on the department. Many of our overseas missions are operating at full capacity. Given the tough economic and fiscal times we're facing, it's clear that our ministry will have to continue to innovate in order to deliver its programs in an efficient way.