Authored by Max Berger, CILA Board Member, and Barrister & Solicitor, Max Berger Professional Law Corporation.
Canada offers a wide variety of immigration programs ranging from family reunification, economic immigration and refugee determination. Applicants from all over the world and from inside Canada submit their applications with the expectation that they will be reviewed in a fair and transparent manner. They also expect a decision in a reasonable amount of time.
However recently amended processing times, publicly available on the Canada Immigration website give cause for concern. For example accepted convention refugees applying for permanent residence outside Quebec have a waiting time of 99 months; inside Quebec – 104 months. Many employers are reluctant to train and hire an employee with uncertain immigration status. If a 99-month wait is not long enough overseas dependents of convention refugees can wait an additional 50 months to be reunited with their parents or spouse. The Immigration and Refugee Board currently has a backlog of about 300,000 claims waiting for a hearing date which is now taking about 22 months. With these figures, a refugee who leaves behind a five-year-old son to make a successful refugee claim in Canada will wait 22+99+50 or 171 months to be reunited with his son who would by now be age nineteen.
Processing times for humanitarian and compassionate applications have been updated from 2-3 years to now take more than 10 years. These are applications typically made within Canada by those who cannot fit into existing immigration categories such as elderly parents, failed refugee claimants, workers with insufficient points for permanent residence etc…CBSA (Canada Border Services Agency) is mandated to remove those who have fallen out of status as soon as possible. CBSA is certainly not going to wait for 10 years for a decision before carrying out removal. This new processing standard effectively makes humanitarian and compassionate applications moot. Processing times for sponsoring a dependent child have also changed. If the child lives in Kenya – 17 months; in Nigeria – 19 months. No child should be separated from their parents for that length of time.
The impact of these processing delays on families waiting to be reunited is obvious. Less apparent is the impact on the Courts. The already overburdened Federal Court is expecting 24,000 new cases this year. It will see a spike in mandamus applications wherein applicants who believe they have been waiting far too long can ask the Federal Court to order the Immigration department to reach a decision in their application. There will be an increase in stay applications where applicants ask the Court to stay or stop CBSA from carrying out removals pending an outstanding decision.
How did we get to this point? A number of factors are at play. Post COVID, IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) opened the doors wide and issued an unprecedented number of visitor, student and foreign worker visas. Many who arrived with these temporary visas did not want to leave and have applied to extend their status or are seeking permanent residence status. Students who chose Canada for its pathway to permanent residence feel frustrated by new rules limiting the issuance of post graduate work permits. Refugee claimants continue to chose Canada and bypass the United States over its inhospitable treatment of immigrants.
Canada must be responsive to world events such as wars, failed economies and climate change that drive mass migration and make Canada an attractive choice. At the same time we must be nimble in dealing with the backlog of inventory that has led to these processing delays. Adequate resourcing of IRCC is key. Yet inexplicably this past January the government announced it would be laying off 3,300 IRCC employees, a quarter of its workforce. Ostensibly the government justifies the cuts in light of the reduced intake of permanent and temporary residents announced for the coming years.
Yet these layoffs are the opposite of what is needed to deal with the current backlog of inventory. Reacting to the layoffs, Canada Employment and Immigration Union (CEIU) national president Rubina Boucher stated – “Families longing to reunite, business grappling with critical labour shortages, communities struggling with housing that needs builders, and a healthcare system desperate for skilled workers will all suffer the consequences of this decision.” It defies logic that these IRCC layoffs would proceed while the Prime Minister announced a few days ago that 1000 new CBSA officers and 1000 new RCMP officers will be hired. Looking at the proper resourcing of IRCC within a larger context, the government still plans to commit 27 billion dollars to the purchase of F-35 fighter jets. It all comes down to a question of priorities.
There is no doubt that efficiencies can be found to expedite processing in all immigration categories. For example refugee claimants undergo a FESS or Front End Security Screening prior to their claim being sent for a hearing. Why then does a further security screening have to take place after the claim is accepted, other than to add to processing times? Another example – the Immigration and Refugee Board allows for a paper screening of a well documented file to obviate the need for a formal hearing. Yet this method of efficiently disposing of claims is seldom used despite a backlog of approximately 300,000 claims.
Adequate resourcing and efficient management are the keys to reducing these untenable processing times. We should not lose sight of the old maxim – justice delayed is justice denied.
