Thank you.
Mr. Vincent, we can sense the emotion in your submission. Thank you for being involved in private sponsorship. It is a very critical part of the refugee resettlement.
I can only imagine how frustrated you must have been with the previous government in terms of the levels they had set, compared to the levels we have set. You yourself indicated that there was a 10,000-person target set by the previous government. The current government, just to clarify, has in fact brought in 27,200 Syrian refugees to date, and we will be settling 44,800 individuals as refugees in this country this year. That is pursuant to the levels that we announced on March 2.
I wanted to ask you, in terms of the costs.... If I understood you correctly, you indicated that you want faster processing, particularly of the PSRs from Syria, and I have three short questions.
One relates to refugees from other parts of the world, who, in my view, would be equally needy, so I want to know your perspective on them compared to the people just coming from Syria.
Second, as we have heard this repeatedly today, do you acknowledge that there are costs that relate to PSR sponsorship that exceed the first year, so that in years two, three, four, and five, there are settlement costs, health care costs, and education costs related to people who are in this country?
The third point is that if more money needs to be dedicated to the processing to make it faster, how much more money would you seek to have the government spend on this initiative?
Thank you.