Under the former government, Canadians who fell in love with someone from abroad saw their lives turn into a bureaucratic nightmare. During the last year, processing times for the spouse of a Canadian to become a permanent resident have doubled. For spouses who are processed inside the country, processing times are now 27 months; for spouses whose applications are processed at visa offices outside of Canada, the wait can be up to an astronomical 49 months. For Canadians whose spouses are abroad, this means up to four years of their married life living apart. Different hardships face those whose spouses are already in the country:more than two years, potentially, living as a single income family, with the sponsoring spouse needing to pay for the spouse’s healthcare, including the birth of their Canadian children, being unable to visit family abroad, even as family and loved ones become ill or pass away, for fear of not being allowed re-entry to Canada. These families live under enormous financial and emotional stress. Any newlywed couple will already face a lot of challenges. The adjustment to a new lifestyle as a married couple, to a new family and new situations. The meshing of two lives and two families bring about economic and emotional adjustments and difficulties of all sorts. Canadians who marry outside their nationality are punished with monumental extra challenges, imposed on them by their government. A government who clearly does not consider them to be a priority, no matter how good a citizen they are, even though they have diligently paid their taxes. And even though they paid more than $1000 in fees to CIC for their sponsorship applications. Fees which do not guarantee processing even within the next two years. This October, when the Liberal government was elected, more than 16 thousand Canadians suffering under these hard circumstances felt hope. The new platform promised to make Spousal Sponsorship and Family Reunification a priority, to double the budget of these categories and streamline processing, and to grant immediate Permanent Residency to spouses of Canadians. As soon as the new Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, John McCallum, took office, we offered to meet with his team to discuss the situation of our stream and suggest alternatives to improve it, in the short and long term. We were absolutely clear that the goal of bringing 25,000 Syrian refugees in the upcoming months was a priority and we supported it, but we also knew there was enough budget to deal with other categories while these efforts took place. For that reason, we were prepared to suggest short term actions that could alleviate our suffering while we worked towards the big changes. However, up to this date, the meeting hasn’t taken place, and despite our continued efforts, we do not know when the Minister will be willing and able to meet with us. And, we are still waiting for concrete answers and solutions for our stream. We don’t know what will be done or when. To worsen this situation, Minister McCallum has replied to questions about our stream by ignoring it completely, as seen in the intervention of Member of Parliament Michelle Rempel. He has been asked about this stream by both Rempel and his colleague Bob Saroya, and on both occasions his reply has been about refugee streams, completely overlooking the Canadians awaiting answers on spousal sponsorship. We are looking forward to working together towards real improvement in our immigration category, a stream that has been swept under the rug for years and deserves diligent treatment. However,as it stands now, we don’t feel “cheerful” with a government that has responded to our stream with silence and inaction. Quite the opposite: we, as Canadians, feel hopeless, ignored and insulted.