Thank you, Mr. Cash, for the question.
Everything we do is focused on reducing those backlogs and wait times, and we have brought them down overall by 50% or more, and even more dramatically in the federal skilled worker program. For parents and grandparents, I went into some detail about what we've done; and yes, the backlog is not gone, but those in the backlog are being processed at an unprecedented rate.
I hope that when Canadians, whoever they are, applicants or relatives of applicants, come into our offices as MPs, they get this information. It's certainly there on our website. It's certainly there in the testimony in front of this committee that 25,000 parents and grandparents—a record number—were processed in 2012, that even more will be processed this year, and that the super visa is available. We want families to have those options and we want that backlog to come down.
Yes, we opened up a limited number of new applications last year, but that's because we're processing 20,000 more applications from the backlog. You won't find any other country, in any jurisdiction, that is as generous to families as we have been, and rigorous in protecting and processing the applications of those submitted in this case.
What we don't want is a return to the dark days when we were accepting applications under a misapprehension. People thought we had the capacity to process them and would process them right away. In fact, we were piling them onto inventories. We're no longer doing that.