Mr. Speaker, I always try not to ask questions of those who actually know the answers. Maybe the hon. member might keep that in mind.
First, the numbers he is talking about are those that existed 15 years ago. When we left office, there were 700,000 in a backlog that people had not yet identified. That number has grown from 700,000 to 900,000, according to the minister.
What the member ignores is that there was $2 billion already put into the system, $1.2 billion for integration purposes, with all the provinces signed on and with the agreements already put to paper, and an additional $700 million to “fix the system” and make it ready. By that I mean to put in place the infrastructure necessary to find out how many of the 700,000 were still live applicants, those who still wanted their application to be there, and then to process those who were in the system.
Regarding how many we have landed, there is a difference between how many came here and how many landed. I would be embarrassed to say that only 450,000 people came to our country last year. We have landed less in Canada last year than we landed when I was minister in 2005. Therefore, we are going backwards. Thankfully many of the people whom we have encouraged to come here are as a result of the policies that I put in place for recruiting students and seasonal workers. However, I will—