QUESTION PERIOD — Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
Processing of Asylum Claims
May 13, 2019
My question for the Leader of the Government in the Senate is concerning the processing of asylum claims, which was recently examined by the Auditor General.
As the Auditor General noted, under the previous Conservative government, “Parliament passed legislation in 2010 and 2012 to reduce the backlog, while continuing to respect the procedural fairness.”
However, under the Liberal government the backlog is worse than ever, with over 70,000 cases waiting for a decision at the Immigration and Refugee Board. The Auditor General found that: “The surge of claims in 2017 outstripped the government’s capacity to process them within the required timelines, leading to the increased wait times. We project that if the number of new asylum claimants remains steady at around 50,000 per year, the wait time for processing decisions will increase to five years by 2024.”
Senator Harder, when does the government believe that the current backlog will be cleared?
I thank the honourable senator for his question. I want to remind him that this government has, in the last three budgets, both made in-year and budgetary increases to the resources allocated to the Immigration and Refugee Board to ensure that the capacity of that decision-making tribunal was more commensurate with the caseload they are experiencing. I was delighted to see that in the last budget they’ve actually indicated that they expect to be able to manage a caseload of around 50,000, which is slightly less than the incoming claim demand, so that the backlog could be addressed in that fashion.
The senator will also know that, in the existing budget bill there are a number of measures that the government is proposing to have Parliament adopt. Hopefully this chamber will agree to increase both the efficiency and the capacity of the Immigration and Refugee Board to manage its caseload, but also for the government to be able to enforce the decisions of the board when appropriate circumstances allow for the removal of failed claimants.
My question is for the Leader of the Government in the Senate.
After extending an reckless invitation to immigrants looking for a welcoming country, your Prime Minister’s government secretly changed the rules governing our borders in an excerpt on page 392 of the omnibus bill. Since 2017, at least 40,000 asylum seekers have illegally entered Canada.
The Auditor General of Canada recently confirmed that the Prime Minister and his ministers were not telling Canadians the truth when they said that Canada and its immigration system had the capacity and the means to welcome all of these people.
The government’s recklessness shows once again that Justin Trudeau is incapable of governing the country.
Leader, your Prime Minister is known for his ability to apologize, so will he apologize for lying to Canadians about our country’s ability to welcome migrants and for having needlessly spent hundreds of millions of dollars? Lastly, will he apologize to all of these disappointed migrants for promising that Canada would welcome them without a problem?
I thank the honourable senator for his question. I won’t respond to the political hyperbole in the question, but I will respond to the substance of what he has asked.
The Auditor General’s report is one that the government accepts. In fact, the Auditor General’s issues have been ones that the government has been addressing over a series of budgets in terms of the capacity. As I referenced earlier, in this year’s budget are a whole series of amendments to the capacity of the Immigration and Refugee Board, and indeed the Department of Immigration, to manage the processing of refugee claimants. I welcome that the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has publicly endorsed the amendments that the government is bringing forward and that this chamber will soon have an opportunity to vote on.
With respect to the illegal immigration, I think it’s very important for all senators to know that the safe third country agreement, which Canada negotiated with the United States, is one that ensured the appropriate responsible country was able to adjudicate claims where the claimant already had the occasion to make a claim, in this case in the United States, and that was, of course, when they entered Canada through a port of entry.
Senators will know because Minister Blair has, when he appeared before the Senate, referenced the work that he is undertaking with the United States to see how we can work together with our American friends on dealing with illegal arrivals in Canada. I think it’s incumbent on us all to recognize that this issue is not a burning platform by any means. It is one that requires appropriate and senior attention, for sure, and it does have that.
My question is for the Leader of the Government in the Senate and also concerns the chapter on the processing of asylum claims in the recent Auditor General’s report.
The report notes that 65 per cent of Immigration and Refugee Board hearings were postponed at least once before a decision was made. About a quarter of claims were postponed multiple times, adding at least eight months of delay.
The Immigration and Refugee Board is supposed to reschedule postponed hearings within 10 days. However, the Auditor General report found that fewer than 10 per cent were rescheduled in that time, and that new claims were prioritized over those that had been postponed. There are many delays and people are not being heard because of unnecessary postponement.
Senator Harder, what concrete steps will the government take to help reduce delay and postponement in these hearings when asylum claims are expected to keep increasing?
I thank the honourable senator for his question. I would commend him to read the full report, because he will be able to inform himself that, in the report itself, the Auditor General refers to the front-end security screening innovation the department has put in place to work with the IRB and claimants’ processing to reduce the need for adjournments and to ensure a more efficient hearing process.
Those measures, along with others that have taken place, some within the IRB and some within the department, show the coordinated capacity of the managers of this system to put in place innovative solutions to ensure the appropriate and effective hearing process for claimants who are entitled to Canada’s protection and that those who are not are dealt with in a more expeditious fashion than this government inherited.
Thank you for your answer.
In addition to scheduling delays, the report also found poor information sharing between the immigration department, the CBSA, and the Immigration and Refugee Board, especially when it comes to information technology. The Auditor General recommended that these organizations find a way to share the information securely, accurately and efficiently, moving from paper to digital processing of asylum claims.
What is the government doing to respond to this particular recommendation to ensure that information on cases is shared and is more effective while still respecting the sensitivity of the information?
Again, I thank the honourable senator for his question. It’s a good one.
The government put in place some time ago a senior level, broadly representative of the departments most implicated in this determination process, to ensure all of the assets of the government were brought to bear. Some of that sees itself in the measures in the most recent budget, but there also have been pilot projects and their adoption system-wide. For example, an Integrated Claims Analysis Centre started as a pilot project in Montreal and is now expanding to ensure that that kind of information is, in fact, more rapidly available and broadly shared.
These are all important improvements to assist them. That is, by definition, a challenging one, particularly when you do not know the number of claimants one will have in any given year.
