A number of factors have influenced processing times over the last few years.
First is the increased levels of immigration over a sustained period. Inevitably that leads to greater numbers of citizenship applications a few years down the road. There has been a direct correlation between those two things. In the last few years as well we have put greater emphasis on integrity in the program, and that has also meant that sometimes processing has been slowed. Sometimes there have also been issues of citizenship judges' positions being vacant, which has slowed some processing as well.
I think we have taken a very large number of measures to try to increase the speed of processing in recent years. A considerable amount of money, $44 million from economic action plan 2013, was given to the department to look at processing. Some other things we have done is that applicants must supply evidence of their language ability up front. In other words, one step of the process is already done before we get the applications now.
Second, since June 2013 we have allowed those who do not pass the knowledge test on the first go-round to take it a second time. That's been very successful with over 50% of those people who have taken it a second time succeeding on the second occasion.
The third way we have tried to increase processing is that sometimes family members were held back because we used to process a family all at once. Now they have the choice, if certain members of the family wish to go ahead because one individual is not ready for citizenship for one reason or another—nothing to do with program integrity—the rest of the family can proceed.
We have taken a number of measures to try to improve processing times.