Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, we're talking about 5,000 principal applicants, 5,000 applications, and thus they would be coming with dependants. For parents and grandparents, it's probably just over two people per application.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We'd be talking about 10,000 to 11,000 people.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Currently we have a little over 50 CIC offices abroad, and they do a variety of different things. Overwhelmingly they are involved in the processing of the full range of applications and making decisions on those applications. We believe, and we've seen this repeatedly, that the local knowledge by having people on the ground is critical to high-quality decision-making in these applications from both temporary and permanent residents.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  All offices have Canadian-based officers, but we do rely on locally engaged staff to support us in these roles.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I think as the deputy minister has indicated, we're in a period of transition right now where we have these cases that came through the ministerial instructions in the old processing system. As we get into express entry we will see faster and faster processing time to reflect it because under express entry we are doing it within six months for 80% of the cases.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The main issue is the inventory of cases that were there and why we were able to do it. We have to couple that with the levels plan we have every year, the number of cases, and the number of visas that we are allowed to issue every year. As you know, we have met our levels plan consistently year after year and that is, in part, the reason an inventory grows.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. In general terms, we're issuing about five million passports a year at the moment. As the minister indicated, we have about 22.9 million valid passports in circulation at the moment. Because we're going from a five-year passport to a 10-year passport, we anticipate there will be a drop in the number of applications very shortly.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, I think it would be better to get back to you with the specifics on that. But yes, indeed, there are some discrepancies between certain offices that take longer than others. It's often a reflection of the situation in that country. Local circumstances change from country to country.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, essentially the discrepancy in that is because we are dealing with a huge backlog. When you deal with a major backlog of applicants and are working through it, the processing times tend to go up before they come down. What we are in right now is that phase of when they're going up as we work through the backlog.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, but as we're seeing at the moment, we increased the number of people who became citizens last year. As we said, it was a record number in Canadian history. We're also going to see very large numbers this year as we work through that backlog. The reality is that if you're applying now, it's going to be well under 12 months.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much. When we were designing this program, we certainly looked at a whole variety of different situations and scenarios, and we tried to anticipate as much as we could. One of the fascinations of working in the immigration program is that you can never anticipate everything that's going to come up.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As the deputy mentioned, last year we welcomed the highest number of new citizens in Canadian history, 262,550 new citizens in 2014. That compares with the previous year of 2013's total of 129,029 individuals. It more than doubled in 2014. Under the new decision-maker model we're very much on track to eliminate the citizenship application backlog.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The processing times themselves, when you look at them as a block, are rather difficult. We're now working through some old cases, and that inevitably means processing times go up before they come down again. What I think is important is that we are on track to meet that commitment, by the end of March 2016, that we will be below 12 months, having worked through the inventory of cases.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The ability to enter the pool started on January 1, and the first round of invitations was sent out in late January.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thus far, but there will be a changing dynamic in terms of who is drawn from the pool as we get more experience, more people in the pool, and so on.