First let me thank my critic with Her Majesty’s loyal opposition for his question and for the conversations we've had over the last couple of days. Today's announcement, for those who are not aware, is positioning Canada to welcome an unlimited number of Ukrainians who are fleeing the war. The mechanism that we're using is designed to get people here as fast as possible.
With respect to the issue of visa-free travel, that's one of the first things that I looked into, because my inclination was to say that might be the quickest way to get people here. When I dug in, I realized that certain regulatory changes would need to be made and certain updates to our IT systems internal to our department would need to be made, potentially with Canadian airlines as well. The timeline to implement that would take 12 to 14 weeks, and I didn't think we had 12 to 14 weeks. We'll be able to stand up a new system much faster.
In addition, there are certain security concerns that we want to protect against. In particular, there are fighters and agitators who have been in the Donbass fighting against Ukraine for the past eight years and whom we want to screen out. We've taken the advanced step of positioning biometric kits in Vienna, Warsaw and Bucharest, and we have 30 additional units throughout Europe that will be able to process people for security as quickly as possible. In my discussions for today—