Processing of Asylum Claims

Opening Statement to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts

Processing of Asylum Claims

(Report 2—2019 Spring Reports of the Auditor General of Canada)

28 May 2019

Sylvain Ricard, Chartered Professional AccountantCPA, Chartered AccountantCA
Interim Auditor General of Canada

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to present the results of our audit report on the processing of asylum claims. Joining me is Carol McCalla, the Principal responsible for the audit.

This audit examined how asylum claims were processed by the Canada Border Services Agency; Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada; and the Immigration and Refugee Board—the 3 main organizations involved in Canada’s refugee determination system.

We found that Canada’s refugee system has been unable to adjust to spikes in the volume of claims and is again faced with a significant backlog. Claims are not being processed within the 60-day target set by the government, and the backlog and wait times are worse now than when the system was reformed in 2012. At the time of the audit, we estimated that the backlog will more than double in 5 years, meaning that families and individuals seeking asylum can expect to wait 5 years to find out whether they will be granted protection.

The fundamental problem is that the system has a fixed amount of funding to process asylum claims, but the number of claims varies each year. The surge of asylum claims in 2017 quickly outstripped the system’s capacity to process them within the required 60 days. In February 2018, the Board announced that it would set aside the 60-day requirement, as permitted by immigration regulations, and schedule hearings according to when claims had been made. By the end of December 2018, expected wait times for a protection decision had reached 2 years.

This flaw is made worse by a number of administrative issues that frustrate the efficient processing of asylum claims. For example, we found that the 3 organizations used different computer systems that did not work well together, resulting in important gaps and errors in the information that was shared. Furthermore, none of the organizations had an upfront quality assurance program to ensure the accuracy and completeness of information collected about asylum claimants. This caused a duplication of effort and delays in claim processing, and a reliance on paper files.

We found that almost two thirds of hearings were postponed at least once. The majority of postponements were due to administrative issues within the government’s control, such as unavailable Board members or delays in security screening. And because new claims were prioritized for a hearing over postponed claims, a single postponement delayed the hearing by an additional 5 months on average.

Finally, few claims that were eligible for faster processing received quicker decisions. The refugee system allows certain claims to be decided on the basis of a file review rather than a hearing. However, we found that this expedited process was used for only a quarter of eligible claims and was actually rarely faster than the regular process. The other three quarters proceeded to regular hearings, and 87% of them received positive decisions. As a result, claims that could have been fast-tracked tied up the system instead.

We made 5 recommendations. All organizations have agreed with all of them and have shared their action plans with us.

Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening remarks. We would be pleased to answer any questions the Committee may have. Thank you.