Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm honoured to speak before the committee today. As mentioned, my name is Sean McLuckie, and I'm the immigration program manager at the Canadian trade office in Taipei.
I'm somewhat concerned that I may run long; the committee members may find that I deviate somewhat from the prepared notes.
Before providing an overview of the processing times here in Taiwan, I would first place our visa office in its wider context. Falling within the north Asia area network, Taipei is a full-service centre, and responsible for the delivery of the immigration program in Taiwan. Compared with offices like those in Nairobi and New Delhi, the visa section in Taiwan is quite modest, both in terms of its size--with 11 full-time staff--and in terms of the territory and population it serves.
In another point of key contrast--which has been mentioned--the programming integrity challenges that are faced in Taiwan are generally much less vexing. I would ask committee members to keep this in mind as they consider our respective presentations.
Now I'll address the issue of temporary residence applications processing.
While Taiwanese have historically visited Canada in very large numbers, this number has been declining—
I'm sorry; is there some way to cut off the translation to my monitor? It's feeding back to me.
All right, I'll do my best.
So I was saying that this number has been steadily and significantly declining over the past decade. Still, over 33,000 temporary resident visas were issued in Taipei in 2010.
TRV applications...
Is there a problem?