Mr. Speaker, from my research and watching Canadian politics as an observer back in the day, I understand that things take time to change. The government is a big ship, and if we are trying to make changes to it, it takes time to do. I have a staff member who has been in a constituency office working on immigration files for nearly 20 years and who says that some of the changes the Conservative government implemented in its 10 years in office started to play out very well in immigration processing times toward the end of 2013-14, 2015-16, and now into 2016-17. These were changes made under the previous Conservative government.
The issue now is that we have two streams. The minister was talking the other night about there being two streams and that the one stream of the illegal crossers has no impact on the other process. I can tell members that this is completely false. The staff in my office are being told by immigrants themselves, who are here trying to get their PRs, work visas, and everything else looked after, that immigration officials are saying that they are sorry that the backlogs are now months and months longer. When asked why, it is because they have had resources redeployed to deal with the illegal border crossers. That is also what the immigration department is telling my own staff.
I would suggest that these two streams the Liberals are trying to throw down the throats of Canadians do not work. They are not working. No one believes it. The fact that times are now lengthening, that it takes longer to get things processed now, has nothing to do with the former government. It has everything to do with the mishandling by the Liberal government of illegal border crossing today.