Mr. Chair, again I will try to keep my questions brief to follow with the new format and the rules of the House and hope that the minister would also do the same.
In June 2003 the government stopped indexing applications; this means opening the application, assigning a case number and putting it on line to prepare for processing. All the department has been doing since is counting the envelopes, so there is no idea of how many people these envelopes represent.
While the government is not processing the applications, it is still cashing the cheques. It is about $1,500 that people put in their envelopes. They are received at the department, the cheques are taken out and the applications sit and sit and sit. This was pointed out earlier by my colleague.
In addition to that, the revenue gained from these envelopes, these applications, has doubled. The fees have doubled since 1994 while the departmental budget has been reduced, so what is it with this money? Is it fair to people to have their money taken in great anticipation and expectation that their applications will be processed when they are going to take years to process?