Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for your question. I hope as well that everybody had a nice Thanksgiving.

Yes, I’m happy to answer your question. The answer is that the government is doing everything they can. Immigration clearly plays a key role in combatting our labour shortage, and I’m advised that the government is prioritizing its work permit processing for in-demand occupations — over 394,000 new work permits from January to August this year, which is more than double the number of work permits processed during the same period last year. That’s important and good news for our economy.

The government is also taking measures to reduce wait times, and I’m assured that the government will be doing even more to tackle the backlog in the short term while making our system more sustainable in the long term.