We have had ongoing for many years a memorandum of understanding with Global Affairs for the support required for our immigration staff and missions abroad. Our department has the largest footprint, the largest number of employees in missions abroad, only after Global Affairs. Other departments also have employees abroad, but we clearly have a very large footprint of staff.
We provide funding to Global Affairs as the visa offices open. For example, in this case we opened visa offices in Guangzhou, China, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania—we expanded the office in Dar es Salaam—and also in Shanghai, China. It's for property growth, for the accommodation space required for office space for additional staff and for housing, and also for much of the work of workload distribution that we're doing and modernization and for the effort towards electronic travel authorization.
The funding goes both ways as well, because we will actually receive funds back. This is a net amount, because Global Affairs will also make an adjustment of their requirements, for example, where we close offices. We closed, for example, our office in Santo Domingo. The services are being provided out of Mexico City, for example, given that the number of applications in Santo Domingo was very small. As an efficiency measure, we also closed our office in Santiago, Chile.
There is, as I say, a sort of back and forth. The terms are all very clearly spelled out in a memorandum of understanding. Every year we make these kinds of adjustments to accommodate our staff overseas.