Mr. Speaker, first, I want to thank the hon. member for Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier for his question and his support for this truly national plan.
As the hon. member said, there has been non-stop processing of files of government-sponsored and privately sponsored Syrian refugees. The refugees began arriving in early March and others are due to arrive in the weeks and months to come.
Once an application is fully approved, in other words, the applicant has cleared a medical exam and a security check, a visa is issued and the government-sponsored or privately sponsored refugee can come to Canada. That is how it works.
Last spring, the minister promised that every effort would be made to process by year end or early next year all the applications for privately sponsored refugees that were filed on or before March 21, 2016. The government has made every effort to keep that promise.
Throughout most of May and June, extra staff joined employees and partner organizations that are already working in the Middle East to process applications of privately sponsored Syrian refugees.
After this blitz period, mission staff in the Middle East continued to process private sponsorship applications and finalize cases.
Again, every effort is being made to finalize the processing of privately sponsored Syrian refugee applications filed on or before March 31, by the end of 2016 or early 2017. This also applies to my colleague's riding.
To meet this commitment, and in light of the Syrian crisis, privately sponsored Syrian refugee applications were processed first. There are other refugee populations that the respondents would like to help and those applications need to be processed as well.
The processing can also depend on a number of factors, including the volume of applications, the security situation in the region, and the rate at which requirements such as security and medical screening can be met.
I imagine that the hon. members across the way know full well that these requirements are very important and need to be met.
The public response to the Syrian refugee crisis has been extremely generous. My colleague talked about that. Between November 4, 2015, and September 25, 2016, 11, 695 privately sponsored refugees were resettled in Canada. The government has not seen such massive support since the Indochinese refugee resettlement at the end of the 1970s.
With so many people joining refugee sponsorship groups or helping to welcome government-sponsored refugees, it was a truly national effort.
I would like to thank my colleague opposite for supporting this national effort. Once again, I thank the member for his question.