Yes, and actually we have. Not only have we applied the tool of ministerial instructions through our action plan for faster immigration to reduce the old skilled worker backlog by more than half, but we have applied the same tool, for example, to the immigrant investor program.
We now have a backlog of nearly 30,000 cases in the investor immigrant program, which is why I announced this summer that we would accept only 700 new applications this year. The other several thousand investor immigrants we admit will come out of the backlog for several years until we can get the IIP backlog down to what we would call “a working inventory”. Then we could expand the number of new applications we'll receive in the future.
Similarly we've applied the same tool to the privately sponsored refugee program. We had sponsorship agreement holders in that program, irresponsibly, I think, submitting thousands of applications—well beyond our ability to admit people—so we have ended up with a large wait list. In some regions, such as Nairobi, it is as long as 10 years because of the huge numbers of applications. We are now working with the sponsorship agreement holders to reasonably limit the number of new applications until we can draw down on the backlog.
Finally, we would encourage the provinces to be mindful of the need to avoid the development of backlogs in their provincial nominee program.