Business of Supply  Chair, the fact of the matter is that it is the long processing times and huge backlogs that frustrate potential immigrants, which is precisely what we inherited from the Harper Conservatives. The fact of the matter is that we have made faster processing of immigration cases our priority and have delivered with respect to the spousal program. I will give an example. The live-in caregiver program went from five to seven years to 12 months under our government.

Business of Supply  We are proud of the work that we have done to reduce the processing times that were left to us by the Harper Conservatives. We understand the importance of reuniting families, which is why we have brought down the processing times for spouses and live-in caregivers.

Business of Supply  We are the government that continues to reunite families. We are the government that has eliminated backlogs left to us by the Harper Conservatives. We understand that investment follows talent. We have redoubled the number of resettled refugees from overseas. We have quadrupled the number of privately sponsored refugees.

Business of Supply  Mr. Chair, under the Conservatives, spousal sponsorships used to take 26 months or more, depending on the country of origin the spouse was coming from. We have made that a priority. We have put extra resources and staff to process spousal sponsorships.

Business of Supply  Chair, the fact is that we have reduced the backlog by 63% in the live-in caregiver program and we have significantly cut processing times for caregivers, from five to seven years under the Conservatives down to 12 months under this government.

Business of Supply  Mr. Chair, I join the hon. member in agreeing with her on the fact that the Conservatives are deliberately misleading Canadians on this so-called queue-jumping. That is not happening. There is no queue-jumping. Refugee claimants are processed by the independent quasi-judicial Immigration and Refugee Board.

Business of Supply  There is absolutely no queue-jumping when it comes to processing of asylum claims, and she is absolutely right that the Conservatives are muddying the waters. They are creating fear by pitting one group of people who are accessing our immigration system against another. That is the politics of fear and division that we have abandoned and that Canadians resolutely rejected in 2015.

Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship  We have no lessons to take from the Conservatives on this issue.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship  Mr. Speaker, the Harper Conservatives would not know what compassion is if it hit them in the face. The Harper Conservatives cut $400 million from border security operations, and they pretend to care about the border.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship  Mr. Speaker, the Harper Conservatives never understood a very simple thing about immigration, that investment follows silence. They did not make the necessary investments in immigration processing. Let us stick to the numbers.

Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship  We have invested more money in the Immigration and Refugee Board, so that genuine refugees can get their claims heard faster. The Conservatives have no clue about compassion for refugees.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship  Madam Speaker, the Conservatives showed contempt for legitimate immigrants. Live-in caregivers provide a valuable service to Canadians. How long did they have to wait in line to rejoin their families under that party?

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship  Its members know very clearly that refugees are processed in a different stream, by the Immigration and Refugee Board, and other immigrants are processed by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Let us talk about processing times. Under the Conservatives, the processing time for spouses was more than 26 months. Spouses, children, and families were kept apart for a very long time. We have brought that down to 12 months or less. Let us talk about the live-in caregiver program.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship  Mr. Speaker, it is very rich for that member to talk about compassion and refugees when Conservatives only had a target of 4,500 in the privately sponsored refugee program. We more than quadrupled that program to 18,000. That member should never talk about settlement and integration, because they slashed settlement and integration money for newcomers.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship  Mr. Speaker, who did not take border operations seriously? The Conservative Party. It cut $390 million from the CBSA. Who did not take asylum claims seriously? The Conservative Party. It cut funding from the IRB, which is why we inherited massive backlogs in the IRB.