Mr. Chair, if I may say, there's been no reduction in the level of funding we have allocated in our budget for processing of the family class or spouses. In fact, on a regular basis as part of managing our department, we do make sure we can look at how we can manage resources across the various business lines and business streams to meet the volumes. The challenge, as the minister mentioned in his comments, is that we've had more spousal applications than space in terms of our levels plan. We have a managed migration system and that is a success in terms of how we manage migration.
The question is how do we accommodate and how can we accommodate the number of applications that we receive within that levels plan. We have tried to address some of the pressure by offering an open work permit. In Canada we've had almost 6,000 spouses who have taken advantage of that open work permit to permit them to work while they are here waiting for their application to be processed. In the meantime, we're making every effort to see how we can expedite, and make sure that we process, as many spouses as we can, because we certainly appreciate and understand the challenges that represents for people in this situation.