Mr. Speaker, I am a little distant from my own personal experience of looking at immigration applications. I used to do that as a staff person, and now folks do that work for me, and I want to pay tribute, as the member mentioned, to the people who do that work for us in probably all the constituency offices of all members of Parliament.
Certainly in my office, and I suspect in most urban offices, immigration casework is probably the largest piece of work our staff do in terms of helping constituents with specific programs. I know that the circumstances of those cases are often the most difficult cases my staff deal with. I have great staff in terms of caseworkers who work on these issues for me. Ayesha Haider, Caren Yu, and sometimes Jane Ireland do this important work for me. They sit with people who are trying to figure out the immigration process. Often, even with their many collective years of experience, they are baffled by something that has happened in this process.
There is a lot of work that could be done to make the process simpler, to make it clearer to people, and to make it possible for them to understand exactly what the requirements are so that they can meet those requirements themselves, without the assistance of a third party, such as a constituency office or some kind of professional immigration consultant or lawyer or notary or those kinds of people. It would be really nice if our system could function so that people could make those applications directly, using their own skills and abilities. They would only engage those people in situations that were infinitely more complex or particularly special in some way.
Right now, too many people feel the need to seek out assistance, because the system is cumbersome in some way for them. I think we could make significant progress in simplifying both the requirements of the system and the basic forms and other information people are required to fill out and provide.