Thank you for the question, Mr. Weston.
I suggested that, at the moment, there is a legal obligation to process and that's why, in 2008, legislation was passed that said we can't possibly accommodate all these applications, so the minister has the right to simply not process some applications.
We do have this backlog under the old legislation that we're obligated--as far as I know, although the lawyers in CIC would know better--to process. But we can't possibly take in all these people without swamping the system, and I don't see that we have a legal obligation to actually issue their visas within a specific length of time. This is the problem, because we raised the expectations, probably, that they would be. But by the same token, we didn't anticipate getting all those applications. It's a problem for the government.
But I would simply have to say, okay, we'll process your application, but you won't necessarily get your visa, because we have hundreds of thousands of other people trying to come in here; if you want to withdraw your application, we'll give you your money back--“with interest”, someone suggested, which I don't take exception to.
This is the only sensible way to handle it. We're never going to bring in all of those parents and grandparents. Why not give them their money back if they'll take it? Otherwise, they can just wait. Unfortunately, many of them will probably be dead before they get their visas.
We've just had 35,000 more applications for parents and grandparents last year. Just about everyone would like to bring their parents and grandparents. It's a great boon. I mentioned that it could be up to $100 billion in their health care costs, so why not bring in your parents and grandparents?