Thank you.
The IRB is funded to make up to 25,000 asylum decisions per year. In any given year, if we get more than 25,000 asylum claims the backlog will go up. If we get fewer than 25,000 claims, it will go down. Fortunately, through the visa impositions on Mexico and the Czech Republic, plus additional resources to the IRB as a part of backlog reduction, it managed to see the backlog come down quite significantly, by almost 20,000 cases in the past two years. I am hopeful that the new faster and fairer asylum system we will put in place this fall following the presumptive adoption of Bill C-31 will discourage significant numbers of unfounded asylum claims, thereby reducing the intake of new claims and allowing us to further reduce the backlog.