Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his remarks and congratulate him on introducing into the House a bill that would alter our immigration framework or at least the numbers in our immigration intake.
I do not disagree with his description of the sentiments surrounding family and the desire of families to have close family members reunited either in Canada or in the country of origin. We can all relate to that.
In his remarks, however, he has not addressed a couple of other fundamental pieces of the immigration program. He has mentioned the current pipeline of applicant immigrants at about three-quarters of a million people. No matter what we do, we will have people who will want to come to Canada, hopefully, but the member has not addressed the need to maintain on a policy basis the 40:60 balance between family class and economic immigrants. The government and Parliament have accepted the 40:60 balance as being suited to Canada. Expanding the family class as he suggests would throw that balance out of kilter.
Second, although the member wants to increase the annual immigration levels, he has not addressed the ability of the receiving communities to take substantial new numbers of immigrants. These are Canadian communities that take in the immigrants and he has not addressed this at all in regard to if there were to be a substantial increase in the volume of immigration and/or family class immigrants.
I am wondering if the member could at least acknowledge that these are issues even if he might be unprepared to address them in detail.