That's right, and the vast majority of francophone immigrants come from Africa.
At the moment, the federal government hardly has any presence in Africa, in terms of visa offices. For example, I know that one office in Senegal serves a dozen or so countries. It's very difficult for people to travel across several countries to get to a visa office. So we need a greater presence. We say we want francophone immigration to Canada, so we need to give ourselves the means to do so, and we can start by correcting that situation.
In sub-Saharan Africa, it is not uncommon for an applicant to have to travel through six countries to submit an application. This is absolutely ridiculous; it's a joke. It goes against what we are trying to do. We say that we want francophone immigration and that we are doing everything we can to achieve our goals. Yet the people who want to come are not able to join us. So this is an extremely important issue that we have to work on.
I mentioned Ontario selecting immigrants, and reaching its target of 5%. We are asking that Ontario be allowed to select more immigrants. The province selected 8,350 immigrants in 2021 and they want to select 13,000. Since Ontario is meeting and even surpassing the 5% target, that is the new target we have set ourselves.