That's very feasible because people pay the fees in advance directly to Citizenship and Immigration Canada. So it's a simple accounting matter. The department knows very well that it's in possession of $50 million.
They can also trace each payment to each credit card. In the same way that if you cancel a sponsorship package, you would get a refund, they know where the money is.
They know how many files come into the system. They know which files are processed as sponsors of parents and grandparents, the category FC4. They report it in the quarterly data and information that they send to members of Parliament and the public.
If they don't know that they have 150,000 payments, the Auditor General should have been brought in yesterday.