[Inaudible--Editor]...exactly the opposite of the truth. Ontario is getting way more than its share of funding on a per-immigrant basis. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, it's about $3,500 per immigrant that we're providing compared with about $2,800 or $2,900 for the other provinces—all of this excluding Quebec, which has its own agreement.
Ontario is getting about $700 per immigrant more in funding, in part because, you're quite right, funding levels were established in 2005 based, quite frankly, on an arbitrary decision that year to bring Ontario up to Quebec's levels. Since that time, the number of permanent residents landing in Ontario has gone from about 140,000 down to about 105,000. So there's been a 35,000 reduction in the number of PR landings in this province, or 25% fewer.
Frankly, I think that's a good thing. One of the things all of my Liberal immigration minister predecessors said was that we needed to get a better allocation of newcomers across Canada, so that all of them would not go to two or three big cities. We've achieved that largely through our partnership with the provinces in expanding the provincial nominee program. So now those 35,000 permanent residents are instead settling in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, B.C., and the Atlantic provinces.
They're being underfunded in terms of settlement funding. So yes, there will be a reallocation, away from Ontario, to follow the immigrants and where they're going.
I make no apology for saying that we should try to approximate an equal per-capita funding level for settlement services based on where people are choosing to go.