Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I note that the Attorney General and everyone has asked the question here about the fact that the backlog has doubled since 2000. Most of the people present here know that in 2004 I was specifically given the title and the job to deal with seven departments, including the two departments here--HRSDC and CIC--to find a way to deal with foreign credentials and foreign-trained workers, whether it was a local backlog here or whether it was people who intended to come. We had set up a plan.
One part, to deal with this backlog of people and to deal with people coming in the future--to fast-forward them--was a portal. The money had been set for this portal. It was going to be a portal in which all jurisdictions--provinces, municipalities, trades, trade unions, universities, credentialling bodies--were going to find a way to let people know before they even came here about whether they were ready to come in and what they needed there. It was plugged in so that it would happen. I want to know what happened to that.
Secondly, it says here that there wasn't an “appropriate” amount of information about retention of nominees from the PNP program. I know that during our discussions for a whole year with provinces, they identified that many provinces brought in nominees and that they left after a year to go to three big cities--Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. We know that data was there. Why is it said that it isn't there?
Finally, I would like to know this: what about that whole plan that was set up, the five-point plan that was funded, that had gone through cabinet, that had begun to work specifically on physicians to deal with the pan-Canadian strategy? What happened to that? Why are we now, six years later, deciding that none of this is happening and that none of that--the data, the information, the plan--was set in place?
I want to know what happened. I need to know that, because we were no longer in government in 2005.
I'm not pointing a finger. I know that you had the information to advise this particular government on what had been planned to be done. I just don't know what happened here.