Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Leader, I trust that you had a great Thanksgiving and are in good spirits and will answer some questions today.

Leader, a recent article in The Globe and Mail reported that, due to a backlog created by federal government policy decisions, thousands of highly skilled immigrants are being forced to return to their home countries as their work permits expire. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a steep drop in the number of immigrants being granted permanent residency in Canada, and your government introduced measures to supposedly reverse this trend, except the opposite happened, leader.

Canada’s immigration bureaucracy wasn’t able to keep up with the influx of applications, and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC, imposed a year-long pause on new applications from people who already lived and worked in Canada. Now thousands of immigrants with Canadian work experience are waiting in limbo and may very well have to leave Canada if their work permits expire before they get their invitation to apply to become permanent residents — for many, this is happening very soon.

Leader, why isn’t your government doing everything in its power to clear the backlog and fix the mess that it created?