Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.
She will not be surprised to hear that her statement about the government continuing to welcome newcomers and support family reunification piqued my interest. During the crisis, immigration file processing slowed down. At first, that made sense: there was a pandemic, after all. Even so, it exposed the fact that processing times are very long right now and that the system needs more funding to speed up processing times and eliminate the backlog.
Many people want to see their family members, but they cannot because their sponsorship applications have been waiting for a long time. In some cases, people have their confirmation of permanent residence but cannot return to their country to take care of their families because they do not have a permanent resident card. That is an administrative process that is now taking months to complete, unfortunately.
My question is simple: Does the member believe, as I do, that more money should be invested in immigration?