You mentioned the Lower Mainland. I would congratulate you and the Surrey community for all the work you have done, and the Sikh community in particular. I was out there early on and they are one of the communities that came forward in a really strong way to support this initiative.
We're kind of into sunny ways, so I'm not dwelling on the acts of our predecessors. I talk about the mushrooming processing times over the last decade, without saying which government was in power over the last decade, so I'm not dwelling too much on whose fault it is why we are where we are. I will say, however, that it's not the fault of the public servants in the department who were faced with declining budgets and the reallocation of resources away from family class.
In terms of hand-picking refugees, that may or may not have been the case. I'm not focusing on that myself. I'll tell you what our policy is. We take refugees from the United Nations list who are defined as vulnerable according to the United Nations, and we invite people from that list. That is totally irrespective of religion and other characteristics, so we are religion-neutral, shall we say, in terms of our selection of refugees.
The previous government had a different view, but I have not looked into that in any detail. I'm more focused on moving forward.