Mr. Chairman, I'm sure this is not being done out of malevolence but a misunderstanding. What we have just seen is a classic example of statistical sophistry from Mr. Davies. He did exactly what I predicted he would do: he took 2006 and compared it to 2010, rather than taking averages.
Mr. Chairman, last year, for example, we had a spike in the federal skilled worker admissions for a precise reason: while we were bringing in ministerial instructions we also increased admissions to reduce the backlog in that program. Something similar happened in one year on family programs—2006.
But if you look at the average admissions under our government, the number of sponsored family members—these are spouses, kids, parents and grandparents—has been 63,500, from 2006 to last year. The average number of family-sponsored admissions under the previous five years of the Liberal government was 60,000.
There has actually been an increase—for example, among spouses and children, the average under the previous government was 39,935; under our government, it has been 46,963. And in terms of parents and grandparents, the average admission in that program under the previous government was 17,500, and over the past five years under our government it has been 17,000—essentially flat.
Mr. Chairman, those statistics are completely misleading.