Let's look at the context in which we're rolling out express entry. What has changed for Canada in the field of immigration?
First, we have reduced backlogs. They're not totally gone. We still have a parents and grandparents program where we've reduced the backlog enormously, but it's not gone. On spousal sponsorship there's still some work to do. On the humanitarian program there is work to do. But in our economic programs, we have eliminated our legacy backlogs. The system was already working faster, attracting more people, and comparing very favourably with the United States, where it's very hard to become an immigrant reliably in anything less than a decade, depending on the stream, and certainly, comparing with our European and Asian partners that don't have permanent economic immigration programs on the same scale.
Second, Canada's economic fundamentals, since the crisis especially, have called attention to the strength of our economy. We have created 1.2 million new jobs. We have had a relatively low unemployment rate. We have had growth when other countries have had anemic growth at best, and some have even slipped back into recession. That has meant more people are interested in coming to Canada for the size of our population than probably ever before.
What does express entry do? Instead of just obliging us to process applications as they arrive, it allows us to look at this larger group of people who are interested in coming to Canada and evaluate them on the basis of merit. How do we decide who comes to Canada as an economic immigrant? We have always operated on the basis of merit in one way or another. We've tried to select people based on their skills and their suitability for what the Canadian economy needs, and since the early 1960s we've had a point system. Now we're able to apply the point system in an updated, modernized form to a large population of interested candidates, find out early on before the application is submitted who ranks highest, and give priority to the people who rank highest.
I think that is an extremely defensible approach. It's one that Canadians strongly support, but it's also very attractive for immigrants because the best ones will benefit, the ones with the best education, the best skills, the right age, and the language profile for Canada based on our point system. For those who don't make it, we'll see how close they are and what they need to do to rank higher next time. It's not only faster and more flexible, but it is also fair in that there are objective criteria by which people, as you say, rise to the top. It also helps us continue justifying large-scale immigration. As you say, 280,000 this year is our target. We've only had an immigration level that high half a dozen times, I think, in Canadian history, once earlier under our government, once under Diefenbaker in the late 1950s, and then in that formative period before World War I when we had very high immigration under Prime Minister Borden.