Thank you. I acknowledge, that's one of the top concerns of newcomers. People raise it with me all the time, as I'm sure they have with all of my predecessors.
You know, Madam Chow, that over the course of 10 or 15 years we saw a huge growth in the overall inventory, and that included family class. The department is constantly looking at ways to administer these programs more efficiently to accelerate processing times. For example, 80% of spousal sponsorship applications are dealt with in less than a year. So if this chap has been waiting for two and a half years, please make a representation to me, and I'll look at that particular case.
I can point out that we've made progress on parents and grandparents. In 2006 it was taking 60 to 80 months. It is now taking 56 months in 2009. I know for many families that is still far too long, but it is moving in the right direction.
I know that we have, for instance, made some progress in Nairobi with respect to family class applications. We've been reducing the wait times and the backlog there.
I would say, though, that globally the challenge we have is that there are more people who want to come to Canada, by several orders of magnitude, than we can process in a period of time. We have the highest relative level of immigration in the developed world, at 0.8% of our population—up to 265,000 in our planning range. And yet, according to the international survey on migration done by Gallup last year, there are over 40 million people who would like to immigrate to Canada. So we receive more applications for the family class categories than we can welcome to Canada in any given year, given the practical limitations we have both on processing applications and on integrating individuals to Canada.
Essentially, more and more people make applications for the number of positions that are available. That is why over a period of time the backlogs have developed.
As you know, there are some regional problems or challenges. For example, you have raised Hong Kong in southern China. As I mentioned to you in my last appearance, we have faced a wave--