I don't disagree with that, but I'd like to address the first part of the question, on levels.
I'm not in favour of setting a specific level. I think we should go back to how we used to run the program. Supposedly we're bringing in large numbers of immigrants to enhance our labour force. The whole idea of bringing immigrants here was to do that, primarily. Family reunification came along with it, and we have a responsibility on the humanitarian refugee side.
At one time about 60% of the movement was for labour force reasons. We didn't set a cap on it; we didn't set a level. We turned the tap on and off. If Canada needed labour and we had occupations that were in short supply, we went out and got those people and processed them very quickly. They got here, got jobs, and did well. The record of the immigrants who came before 1990 shows that.
Now, as I mentioned, we've set a level and the pressure is on visa officers to get the numbers and they haven't got the staff or the ability to do that. So they're shortcutting the system and not interviewing anybody. Can you imagine a Canadian employer hiring anyone they don't interview? Yet we're bringing people to Canada as future citizens when we don't even bother to look at them. That's wrong, and it's part of the reason, as I said earlier, that they're not doing that well.
I wouldn't set a level. I would ask what does the labour force need. If we can enhance that by immigration, do it, and do it quickly, as the Australians do.
One of the problems, if you're starting to bring in large numbers of immigrants to fill your labour force requirements, is it's a confession that there's something wrong with the country's labour force policy. Canada is desperately short of trade colleges and apprenticeship programs. James Knight, the head of the community colleges across Canada, says that 47% of those coming out of high school who want to be plumbers, electricians, or carpenters are not able to get training. Part of the reason for that is we're not investing in that kind of infrastructure because we're getting relatively cheap labour through the immigration stream.