Neither. Mr. Chairman, when I said there had been no cuts, I was referring to the total number of staff at our immigration mission, which has remained constant. There was one Canadian-based officer removed. There were additional locally engaged staff added. There are 12 staff working in Kiev.
Mr. Chairman, the important thing is that our immigration office continues to perform very strongly in Kiev. I visited it in November. In point of fact, it was before Islamabad, so that was the first place I went as minister. I'm happy to advise Mr. Wrzesnewskyj that, for instance, in 2007, we processed 1,700 permanent residency applications from Kiev, last year 1,500. This is in comparison to, for instance, 1,400 and 1,300 in 2004 and 2005. So there has been an increase under this government in the number of people processed in Kiev.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, I don't make operational decisions. I don't tell ADM Deschênes, we need to put one person here, take one person out. They have to look at the global service requirements, and they ship personnel.... And by the way, these officers are very costly to the system. The Department of Foreign Affairs assesses us a charge that they estimate—am I allowed to talk about this?—of about $850,000, I understand, for every visa officer we place abroad. So our operational people have to make some tough decisions, and sometimes it means hiring more local staff, rather than Canadian-based officers. The important thing is, we're doing the same amount of business.