Thank you very much, Mr. Dhaliwal, for your advocacy on immigration. In every facet, I am always grateful for your perspective and the leadership you show.
As I said, we have made tremendous progress in numerous lines of business. I've talked about how we are making that progress by investing resources, by leveraging technology, as well as by being very innovative when it comes to minimizing the disruption of COVID-19 through policy flexibility. I've talked about how those strategies are yielding concrete results in very specific lines of our business—on permanent residency and on citizenship.
I'll also shed light on the progress we are making when it comes to our temporary workers. For example, in the seasonal agricultural worker program, we had 47,362 temporary workers arrive in that specific category. That's an 85% increase year over year from last year's volumes. It's a remarkable figure and one that is allowing us to ensure that Canadians are getting access to the safe and affordable food they need on the table. It's another way in which I think we are demonstrating the strides we have made from the beginning of the pandemic to where we are right now.
We will continue to be innovative. We will continue to invest where we need to and leverage technology so we can make the necessary progress to meet our immigration objectives.