Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses. It is nice to see you again, Mr. Yeates. I have seen you in other capacities.
I just have a couple of brief comments, which I don't expect you to comment on, because they're political.
I want to start with the ministerial instruction. Much has been made on the opposite side about how the opposition parties opposed ministerial instruction. Of course they opposed it for very good reasons. Part of our duty as parliamentarians is to have oversight, and with ministerial instruction when too much power is invested in a minister it means we don't have the transparency and accountability that Canadians demand of their governing system. So I don't expect you to comment on that, but that was a good reason for parliamentarians to oppose that.
As Ms. Sims points out, one of the ways of dealing with a backlog of course is to put more resources into it. It is unfortunate he couldn't stay here for further questions, because this is a very complex matter, but the minister indicated that he appreciated hearing from the committee about recommendations to deal with the backlogs. I understand that some of the recommendations were things like adding more resources, raising levels, and creating an appropriate balance between processing old backlog applications and new applications.
Many of us have very sad stories about wiping out.... It is an interesting way to deal with backlogs. I'm sure health care and other systems would probably love to legislate away backlogs, but it seems only immigration gets to do that.
We've got cases in our ridings where people have literally been waiting years to come to the country. It means they put their lives on hold in their own country. These are skilled professionals. I was at a funeral where a woman was weeping, and I thought it was because somebody had died. It was actually because her sister, who has been on the list for seven years, is not going to come.
So when the department was making recommendations to the minister, did they consider any of these alternatives in terms of reducing the backlog?