Mr. Chair, in terms of the numbers of applications received to March 31, 2016, the number is around 12,000 for privately sponsored refugees.
We are assessing those applications currently. We have more than 65 full-time staff located in the region who do processing, but we also have dozens of staff in Canada as well, both in terms of our office in Winnipeg and also in Ottawa. We actually work across the network. We have a centralized processing network, so that we are able to work across the network.
We have dedicated staff who will be working on these applications. In addition, we are working on operational plans now. We do normally have temporary duty officers who we assign to the field. We are working on our operational plans now, in terms of being able to assess how many officers we would deploy to the field to process these additional applications that we receive to the end of March. That is with the intention, of course, as was announced, that we would finalize processing by the end of December 2016 or early into 2017. That is the planning that we're doing right now.
Otherwise, we know that there has been a great deal of response in terms of organizations and private sponsors coming forward and their interest in sponsoring refugees. Again, this will be taken into account in our 2017 and future years immigration levels planning.