I guess I was inspired, if I could, by what Canada just did with the refugees. Now, I understand that it was a huge financial investment. I'm not naive about that, but what struck me was that there was a moment in time when Canada processed.... It was not only in late 2015 and early 2016. This is something we have done before.
We have a backlog, as you pointed out, of 80,000 families or more. Is there a potential to perhaps clear this up as a one-time effort and simply assess families to see if they can justify the need to expedite this, with the same resources we just showed internationally? That is not to mention the goodwill this just brought Canada internationally in terms of what we did with the Syrian refugees.
My simple answer back is that I think there could be a net gain if we simply got rid of the wait-list to within a reasonable limit of 10,000 or something and then started again to see what we got. That would be my wish.
I wonder what the net gain of such an exercise would be if someone actually crunched the numbers. I have not, but I have colleagues who could. Would this rush to bring in family reunification, in a sense, create enough of a momentum?
I'm from Nova Scotia. You guys are out in Alberta. In Nova Scotia, the one thing we keep saying to Minister McCallum is, “Please, give us more”. Nova Scotia and P.E.I. have done a shining job of this. We are looking for more people. I'm going hat in hand here a little bit.