Mr. Speaker, Canada has an estimated 800,000-person backlog in our immigration system and the wait time for citizenship in urban centres is close to a year. Not only is this important for my riding of Richmond, but it is also very important to the rest of Canada.
The previous Liberal government designed a multitude of efficient and effective immigration policies, allocated $700 million over five years to reduce the application inventory, signed a $920 million Canada-Ontario immigration agreement, and invested over $2.4 billion in immigration policies in 2005 alone. It was a government working for Canadians.
The Conservative government has pledged that it would improve Canada's immigration policy, but instead it has cut the $700 million in funding to reduce the backlog, has failed to formally ratify the Canada-Ontario agreement and has failed to allocate funds for the other eight provinces' immigration strategies. Shame.