Thank you very much, Chair.
It was evident, and I think the Auditor General agrees with this, that we needed some mechanism to limit the intake of applications. Canada is a very popular destination for immigrants. Members may have seen the Gallup poll in the fall that indicated that, given the choice, some 45 million people around the world would like to move to Canada. It was the second most popular destination after the U.S. We don't have a shortage of people who want to come here. Our issue is how we manage that flow, and we need a system to do that.
I think we feel this first attempt at ministerial instruction, trying to limit the number of occupations we would accept, was a start, arguably imperfect, often as these first attempts are, but we definitely feel this is the right way to go. From here we've got two challenges, I think: further refining these instructions to give us a more targeted set of occupations than we had in the first 38. Our experience to date, that some of the particular occupations that were identified have proven to be very popular and likely more than we need to take in, in terms of the labour market assessment--