Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his question. I imagine that in his riding office he must also provide services to people who are waiting to get their citizenship.
Since the Conservatives came to power, wait times have doubled and today, 320,000 people in Canada are still waiting for their application to be processed.
Of course, humanitarian cases have to be processed as quickly as possible. My colleague from Halifax mentioned the case of a mother who was waiting to sponsor her children. For the months she had to wait, she lost track of her children who were in her home country. The wait times are unreasonable. They penalize people who live in Canada, who want to be good citizens and contribute to our country. For humanitarian reasons, we have to address the processing times problem.