We have nothing in the budget in regard to that challenge but we have not lost sight of it, quite the opposite. It is part of our priorities for this year. Why has there been an increase in backlogs and processing times over the past few months? Unfortunately that is because the number of family reunification applications, especially for the sponsorship of spouses, was far greater than we expected. So we have to find resources to process a larger number of applications than we had forecast.
In order to meet this challenge, we determined rather quickly at the end of last year that work permits had to be issued more rapidly to the spouses whose applications were still being processed. This year we are trying to find new resources in order to tackle those backlogs and see to it that the processing times for reunification cases and spousal sponsorship do not go beyond their current levels.
That said, we must not forget that sponsorship through the parents and grandparents program was enormously successful in the course of the last three years. We had to process 75,000 applications in three years, which was unprecedented in our history. The principle of family reunification remains absolutely essential in our programs.