Citizenship and Immigration committee  Those instructions were put out last summer, if I recall correctly. We're asking our officers, when they face a situation where people are coming for humanitarian reasons, a funeral or something like that, to exercise as much sympathy as they can in considering a visa. If they cannot consider a visa, the instructions also remind them that they have the authority to issue a permit, even though they think they may be taking a risk doing that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Do you remember that the initial levels for 2005 had a target of 6,000 parents and grandparents?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Then it was adjusted to 18,000 by adding an incremental 12,000 for two years—last year and this year. So the actual target was 18,000.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  At the time, under the Live-in Caregiver Program, that was taken into consideration so that those people could stay until they obtained permanent residency. Currently, for this type of worker, the Department of Human Resources and Social Development has a policy of keeping workers during the entire duration of their employment, because they work in seasonal industries.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We had a process of about a year of consultations. It was the first time we had all the stakeholders in the same room. It was a forum in which we had all the various stakeholders in one room for discussions over about two days about improvements that could be brought to the program.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have not attached a timetable to it, Mr. Siksay, because we were preoccupied with things that had been identified as higher priorities. We can't pull the work we did on in-Canada spouses and other social policy issues.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are processes in place between the human resources and skills development department, the provinces, the employers, and the unions, who are involved as well, to make sure there is someone there to ensure that if people are in difficult situations, they can raise their hands and be helped.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not familiar enough with that to give you a reasonable answer.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  While there are a few long-term U.S. citizens, these are primarily the children of the third country nationals who have come to make a claim, as they've been in a difficult situation in the United States for a while and have decided to come and claim refugee status in Canada. Their children were born in the States, so they are U.S. citizens.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I am not sure that I understood your question, Madam Faille. If you are referring to the Convention on the Rights of Migrants, we have not signed it. Over the years, Canada has given its reasons for not ratifying that convention. However, I believe that the minister's statements you are referring to allude to the work he is doing with his colleague from the Department of Human Resources and Social Development to make sure that our program does more to meet the needs of the labour market as well as other issues that have been raised earlier by this committee.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The policy for agricultural workers and for seasonal workers is established by the Department of Human Resources and Social Development. As I mentioned earlier, there are programs which allow the agricultural sector to hire approximately 10,000 workers. I might add that those workers help meet the need for this type of labour.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  What I am trying to say is that if you were to try to.... What your question leads to is an effort to bring more immigrants to Canada, right? Every year the government needs to set its plan and to table with Parliament how many immigrants there will be. The government does this following consultations and after trying to see what the right numbers are, given how immigrants are doing.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The number, I think, is in the inventory. Right now, the parents' and grandparents' applications we're processing date back to May 2004. Those are the ones we're processing right now; the people who applied in May 2004 are the ones we are processing.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Of course, we continue to receive more applications per year than are set in the level plans, so that's going to go up, unless—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There's no money appropriated for that, no. What I would offer—