Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our guests for being here again, or a continuation from the first hour.
I'm going to talk specifically to the backlog issues and different immigration streams. Obviously this is one area the department has to deal with and report on in the report on priorities and planning.
We all know that in 2008 the government made the necessary decision to use ministerial instructions to help deal with the massive backlogs. This budget bill includes provisions that will allow the government to use ministerial instructions again in a few different ways, including the creation of temporary economic programs to respond to the rapidly changing needs of Canada's economy. I'd like to therefore ask you some questions in this regard.
When our Conservative government came into office in 2006 there was a backlog in our immigration programs of a whopping 850,000 people. With respect to the federal skilled workers program alone, can representatives from the department remind us of the number of people who were in the backlog of the pre-2008 foreign skilled workers program? I think the minister mentioned it very quickly. I would like to hear it again, because I didn't quite catch it.