Mr. Speaker, let me be perfectly clear. I am very much in favour of the 1% per year target. I believe that we need to strive for more immigration, and we need to compete internationally so that more people choose Canada as their destination.
One per cent of our population per year would be about 330,000 per year. We have come nowhere near that. My first choice would be that we do.
I will comment briefly on my colleague's opening remarks. In 1993, when the Liberals took over, maybe it was faster to process an immigration file, but by the time they had finished gutting the immigration system and had laid off one-third of the civil service, trying to process anything became a nightmare. That is when the burden fell to MPs' offices to become de facto immigration offices.