Mr. Speaker, replacing the lottery with a cap that is all a first-come, first-served system is not remedying the problem.
As members of Parliament, people come to us when the system is not working for them. We try to help guide them. Here is an example of what a constituent told me by email last month: “You are the first person who answered us about my immigration issue in the past ten years. We have hired a lawyer for 3 times to request information. We tried any way we can to make contact with the immigration office, but nothing has happened so far.”
All we did was use the back-door number that members of Parliament have to ask Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to check the status of her permanent residency application. It was not a big effort.
Again, and we just cannot state this enough, if we could restore our front-line public services and allow people to get clear answers on why their applications are being held up, it would not leave them waiting interminably. It is heartbreaking for these families. Simply changing the style of the program has not made the change we need.