Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the member's remarks. She covered a great deal of territory and a lot of points.
I want to address the immigration component of her remarks. I suggest that the backlog she describes, while it is real and while it numbers some 800,000 or 900,000 people, is not necessarily a function of anything that Canada has done wrong. At least in part, the backlog is there because of the increased demand in coming to Canada.
Canada still is taking 250,000 to 300,000 new Canadians every year. We continue to generally meet our immigration targets. I am not so sure if we have even asked Canadian communities if they would be in a position to accept another 100,000 or 200,000 per year. That is a whole other question. We now take about 300,000 per year and can our Canadian communities absorb more than that?
We are really looking at a way to manage the increased demand for entry to Canada. I am curious to know whether she believes the measures in the four sections in the budget implementation bill will manage to address that issue of higher demand and increasing the backlog, which some people can regard as an inventory of immigration applicants wishing to come to Canada.