Mr. Speaker, with regard to the backlog for parents and grandparents, it was never seven years during the Liberal administration.
I was a provincial politician for almost 20 years. Immigration was an important issue for me personally, as it was for the constituents I represented. At times the backlog may have moved closer to four years.
Let there be no doubt that the Liberal Party has consistently argued that parents and grandparents are an absolutely critical component of any mixture of immigrants who come to Canada in any given year. Our party would never support any freeze of that program. As I said, the program brings economic benefit to the country; as well, quite often parents and grandparents are the rock of stability within the family unit, and that is something that cannot be replaced.
My colleague made reference to hitting the delete button and skilled worker program. I had a chance to talk about that issue during my first remarks, but I also want to comment on the visiting visa issue.
Given that someone in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration might be listening to what is happening this afternoon in the House, I want to emphasize that the Liberal Party is quite upset with regard to the number of visiting visas being denied. Siblings, parents and so forth want to come to Canada to participate in such things such as graduations, weddings and funerals. There are all sorts of valuable reasons.
This issue needs to be addressed and must be addressed. We call on the government to look for ways we can deal with that in a more tangible way—