Thank you, Minister, for appearing this early in the morning.
I wish to go a little bit into our Canadian immigration successes of recent times. Immigration plays a very important role in Canada's long-term prosperity and our competitiveness in the international marketplace. I am an immigrant who came here initially as an international student in the 1960s. While the previous government under the Liberals had cut immigration by 32% in the first five years in office, we have welcomed the highest sustained level of immigration in Canadian history.
From what you have told us here today, we're moving into this express entry system. The express entry system will move away from the cyclical temporary immigration designed to meet short-term needs and to redouble our efforts to permanent immigration that will attract skilled workers who will make real contributions to the Canadian economy.
How do you see this express entry truly benefiting Canada in terms of meeting our labour manpower requirements with our economic needs? Are all of our immigration streams going to be facilitated through this express entry? Interestingly enough, the way the program is designed in express entry, there's a computerized background to it which we call...you know, when you want to search for a record, in computer science there's a technique called bubble sort. The bubble that is the greatest, the best, rises to the top at a much faster rate, whereas compared with the old sequential or random search method, you don't get that type of efficiency.
Perhaps you could go into this aspect of our new system.