Thank you, Mr. Chair
Thank you very much for attending our meeting this morning.
As a fellow Niagaran, I certainly want to express to you my appreciation for all the work you do. It's not often that an MP has the opportunity to work with a consulate on such a regular basis, and I certainly appreciate all the efforts you put forward.
I know that between my office and yours we have a great and strong working relationship, including our recent trip to Albany, New York, to meet with legislators down there. I certainly want to thank you for the work you do. Please pass on my regards to the consul general. It would be much appreciated.
I have a couple of questions in regard to the fact that you are in close proximity to Canada. One thing is that if we're actually at your facility and we witness the processing of the work you do, I was surprised, certainly, at the amount of files that are actually so easily transferable between processing centres and consulates.
I wonder you could speak to that from a global perspective. In terms of our work with understanding these wait times better from region to region and country to country, a lot of us aren't aware of the amount of the transfer of files that takes place and the work that's done not just at your facility, obviously, but across North America.
I wonder if you could describe how that process works and perhaps the number of transfers that are made between your centre and those across North America.