Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the officials for being here again with us today.
Clearly, there's a lot of interest from people who want to come to Canada. We know that. We see it from the number of hits on the website. We all hear in our constituency offices from families, and so forth.
I want to set the record straight on what has happened and lead up to a question.
We have welcomed a growing number of visitors, foreign workers, and international students over the last seven years. In fact, in 2012 Canada issued a record 1,000,000 visitor visas—that's a 40% increase since 2004—and a record 100,000 international student visas, an increase of 60% since 2004. These individuals play an important role in fostering Canadian economic development through tourism, trade, commerce, and educational research activities. We are in somewhat of a competitive situation with other countries in the world in attracting the brightest to come to our country.
How will raising the fees on a temporary resident application affect our competitiveness in attracting these visitors?