Thank you, Madam Chair. There are some really excellent questions there.
Just to take them in turn, with respect to the disparity in how quickly some of the applications are coming in, I think it really does come back to that client behaviour. We know that international graduates often seek that pathway. A number have made the transition before, so it wasn't surprising to us that they were first out of the gate, but it's still really early days on the other ones.
We have put forward that six-month runway to really allow time for other essential workers and health care workers and francophone speakers to have that time to apply. I think we're going to see some changes over the next couple of months, and there's still time left, so I don't think we need to worry yet.
With respect to the question and comment about small restaurant owners, one thing in putting this together is that the minister had a lot of things to consider and a lot of priorities to balance. By selecting particular NOC codes for “essential”, it certainly doesn't mean that other positions aren't essential, but we did hear from stakeholders, and when we look at employment data—in particular, that provided by the labour council—we know that there are certain areas where there are a number of Canadians who are ready to work, so we weren't looking at codes where there would already be high unemployment rates. Certainly, the contributions of restaurant workers are really important in Canada and to Canada's economy, but there was a lot of thought put behind the balance of that.
One of the other points I wanted to mention is that all of the other pathways still exist: the provincial nominee program, the rural and northern immigration pilot and the Atlantic immigration pilot. All of those pathways still exist alongside this special temporary public policy that was put in place, so there will be opportunities above and beyond this pathway.
I think I heard that the last question was on an undertaking in writing for the NOC codes that are part of this, as well as the ones that aren't. Certainly, we've made note of that. I would warn, Madam Chair, that the NOC code list is fairly extensive, but we'd certainly do our best with that.