Mr. Speaker, I sit on the same committee as the member and he is familiar with the backlogs. One of the references I often make is to the ministerial instructions, and that is the current minister's first attempt to deal with the backlog. When he brought that forward in 2008, in essence it created 140,000 additional brand new files, thereby increasing that backlog likely, many would argue, more quickly than any other minister before him.
Will the member acknowledge that the minister did increase the skilled worker backlog by 140,000? It is not a trap question, it is more of a question of accepting responsibility more than anything else. After all, it is in the report itself. Would the member acknowledge that fact?