Madam Chair, when I'm looking at the numbers, temporary resident visas took 13 days to process back in 2015. These are IRCC's numbers. Now it's up to 72 days as of April 2022. Study permits took 31 days, and now it's 88 days. Work permits took 42 days, and now it's 62.
I'm just wondering whether things are getting better and all of these investments are working. Since 2016, we've been pouring more and more resources into this department. With more people, more money, the backlog has increased.
It's not the pandemic, Minister. The backlog, prepandemic, was 1.8 million. It's over two million. Perhaps it is a little bit better in the last few months, but this is a lot of resources that we poured into this department. The numbers that I quoted to you go back all the way to 2015, and everything has gotten worse since then.
Why should the people who are waiting to come into the country to study here or to work here, or who are desperately trying to bring in that key worker to get their business started, believe you?