First of all, over the past five years since our government came to office, there's been a significant expansion in the number of public servants, full-time-equivalent public servants, in our ministry. There's also been a substantial expansion of the operational budget of the ministry. For example, accompanying the passage of Bill C-50 in 2008, and the introduction of the action plan for faster immigration, there was $109 million of additional resources for processing.
In terms of overall backlogs, it's true that the backlog has gone up. As you know, Mr. Davies, I underscore that it's a serious problem, and I admit quite openly to some responsibility for that on the part of our government. It's also true that we inherited an overall backlog of 840,000. But had we not taken the actions that frankly all the opposition parties have opposed, such as the amendments to allow for ministerial instructions, the backlog would not now be a million; it would be well over one and a half million.
The good news is that through ministerial instructions on the skilled worker program, the pause in applications for parents and grandparents, and investor immigrants, etc., we are now finally seeing the huge and growing backlogs coming down.
Perhaps Madame Deschênes would like to comment on operational challenges in terms of—