As I mentioned, I am a big fan of the private sponsor program. I have invested a great part of my life trying to privately sponsor refugees myself.
I think your committee was very generous when the high commissioner came to Canada and you hosted a lunch with him. When he was here in Canada—and he reflected to me on his experience subsequently—one of the things he came back with was that he was incredibly impressed by the generous spirit in Canada. One of the things I would say about the private sponsor program this year is that my concern about it isn't so much the backlog, but as the high commissioner said, that we want to keep the spirit alive, that we want to keep this strong support. We don't want people to come away frustrated and such. We want to maintain as much as possible.
That said, Canada is going to resettle a record number of refugees this year if it fulfills its plans—more than has ever been done before. So these are the tensions.
I don't want to be overly critical, but I know there are lots of groups in society who want to sponsor refugees—I'm part of one myself—but at the same time, Canada is bringing a record number this year. So I think the question is how we can sustain and ensure that this isn't just a moment, a statistical blip, but that we're effectively starting a new chapter.