Mr. Chair, the Government of Canada values all of those men and women and those organizations which, through their altruism, are manifestations of those values that are typically Canadian as they sponsor many of these refugees.
There has been a problem, and I acknowledge that. In part it is because many of those who have made application for landing as refugees have not always met the criteria. There are many who have been identified as ineligible. I hate to give examples but I do it for illustrative purposes and I do not mean to tarnish anyone by it, but it is quite understandable that some of the current refugees are hoping that through private sponsorship they can get some of their relatives in, their next of kin. While that may be a legitimate objective on their part, it really does not fit the criteria of the private sponsorship of refugees.
What we have already planned for this year is a tripartite conference, including the Government of Canada, NGOs, private sponsors and the UNHCR in an effort to try to build the kinds of criteria and acceptance of criteria by all partners so that we can have a better outcome.
The other thing we have to keep in mind is that in many places where we would have some of the very legitimate applicants for refugees, we do have logistical problems that have nothing to do with us but are all indigenous to the territory, such as, the post office, other methods of collecting data and getting people from point A to point B. We are working on that and that is why we need to have the UNHCR involved.