Thank you.
Mr. Minister, I noticed that according to the Canada Immigration Centre statistics, it takes about 40 months to process 50% of the privately sponsored refugees' files from your Nairobi office. Let me rephrase that: it takes more than three years to process 50% of the privately sponsored refugee claims filed in Nairobi. We know that this office is responsible for countries such as Burundi, Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda. These are the countries that have been subject to violent conflicts. And people from Sudan, for example, are lately making their way to Kenya, thus adding to the workload in the office.
We have millions of displaced people in that region all seeking refuge, and there are a lot of smart individuals—motivated, skilled folks—who are languishing in refugee camps. Their children are growing up in camps; pregnant women are giving birth to children. Refugee camps are not a place to raise a family.
These are people with aspirations. We know that; we've seen it. We know that many refugees—for example, the boat people—have came to Canada and done really good work here. They want to raise their families and give their children a good life. Many Canadians, and I believe you met with quite a few of them through the churches—Groups of Five, as you recall—understand the plight of these displaced people. They are privately sponsoring the refugees. Many Canadians are willing to support refugees, and there's no cost to your government other than the processing time.
But what I can see is that there's a huge backlog, and it's taking years for people either to bring their children from refugee camps to come to Canada to be united with them or to sponsor them into Canada. I have cases, recently one of a 14-year-old daughter waiting in a refugee camp. The Nairobi office told me that the officer in charge was away for three or four weeks and that no other officer could deal with that case.
Something is wrong in that office. Instead of spending $12 million fingerprinting parents visiting their children, during wedding times, the birth of babies, funerals—all these visitors you are planning to do biometrics on—why aren't you putting more funding into your overseas office to ease the backlog? It's incredibly sad to see these refugee camp people stuck in the most dangerous place in this world, really.
And the numbers have dropped. I looked them up. Since 2000 and 2001—I look at Congo—the numbers have dropped tremendously for people coming from these dangerous places. Take, for example, Somalia. A female humanitarian population that was 338 in 2001 is now down to 60. It's not as if there's no need, and the numbers are dropping and the waiting time is growing.
What's wrong, and why isn't more funding being put into those places and the target being increased?