Citizenship and Immigration committee  We did have expenditures.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  A number of factors have influenced processing times over the last few years. First is the increased levels of immigration over a sustained period. Inevitably that leads to greater numbers of citizenship applications a few years down the road. There has been a direct correlation between those two things.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I believe about 85% of the revocation cases at the moment are related to residency fraud. That gives you some indication in that particular area, but it is one of the key areas where we would go to hearings over residency questions with judges as well.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Currently it is quite high but we are bringing it down dramatically. It is around 30% at the moment but we are putting measures in place to make sure that the instructions are very straightforward for our applicants. This is having some impact as well.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Not necessarily, no.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the whole point is that we are trying to protect the victims, and we're not going to victimize them again because of the situation they were put into involuntarily.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  With respect to the processing times overall, we try to do spousal applications within the service standard of 12 months, and unfortunately we're above that in 80% of the cases we're dealing with. Our global average at the moment is about 17 months. We continue to try to work our way through that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can start and my colleague can continue, but I think that a number of the other issues you mentioned are common across all countries. These are particularly heinous ones that Canada does not want to tolerate and wants to make that very clear right up front. It is an effort to try to ensure that people are not put in vulnerable situations.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The operational bulletin that explains this is Operational Bulletin 480, and it's readily available on the CIC website. We can certainly make it available to the clerk as well.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's a very broad question, but thank you. This is a very complex, difficult issue. We're all trying to grapple with what the best way is to go at this. Over the past few years there has been an enormous effort to address it in a number of different ways, such as legislation, outreach, training, work with the settlement agencies, and so on.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll answer very quickly and then turn the question over to my colleague. Yes, there are protections for those individuals. That's the whole point of a lot of this legislation: to try to protect them and to give them opportunities often to remain in Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I understand your point. I think the immigration officers, and especially from the guidelines, would be very sensitive to that sort of situation and would not pre-empt the legal situation for an immigration solution. I think—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, I don't think we have the level of detail to make that correlation at all. I don't think it's possible at the moment. One point I made in the opening presentation, though, was about the number of women who are accessing our settlement services, and particularly the number who are accessing our language training.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, I think you raise an important point here. I think what CIC is trying to do is deal with the immigration issues, and if there are other factors that need to be considered, we would be referring those to the experts in those particular areas so that we are dealing with the immigration side of it.