Mr. Speaker, I agree with the hon. member that the minister's record does not bode well. The Immigration and Refugee Board has a huge backlog partially because there are a lot of vacancies on the board. The whole system is not working. Even though Parliament has said to implement the law and establish a refugee appeal division so that refugees would have an appeal process, she has not done so.
In terms of numbers, permanent landed immigrants to Canada dropped by 10,587. The number went from 262,000 in 2005 to 251,000 in 2006. The numbers for 2007 are just coming out. The problem is that while the number of permanent residents is falling, the number of temporary foreign workers coming to this country is rising.
In Alberta alone there is an increase of somewhere close to 300% in temporary foreign workers. A lot of the immigrants who are coming in now are coming in not as immigrants but as migrants. They have no future in Canada. They are most likely not able to stay in Canada. They cannot bring their family members to Canada. That is really unfortunate.
The backlog under the Liberal government and now the Conservative government has increased dramatically to 925,000. That is very unacceptable. Furthermore, speaking about things not being in order, we found out today that there are empty visa forms--