Opening Statement before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts

Processing Applications for Permanent Residence—Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada

(Report 9—2023 Reports of the Auditor General of Canada)

5 December 2023

Karen Hogan, Fellow Chartered Professional AccountantFCPA
Auditor General of Canada

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to discuss our report on processing applications for permanent residence, which was tabled in the House of Commons on October 19, 2023. I would like to acknowledge that this hearing is taking place on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. Joining me today are Carol McCalla and Erin Jellinek, who were responsible for the audit.

In this audit, we looked at whether Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada processed applications for permanent residence efficiently and promptly to support Canada’s economic, family reunification, and humanitarian goals.

Overall, we found that despite recent efforts to improve application processing times, most people were still waiting a long time for a decision, with the longest wait times for those applying to refugee programs. At the end of 2022, large backlogs remained across all 8 permanent resident programs that we examined.

The department did not meet its service standards for prompt processing in any of the programs we examined. It also had not established service standards for refugee programs, contrary to Treasury Board directives. People applying to refugee programs waited the longest, on average almost 3 years.

We also found that the expected processing times provided online did not consider the existing application volumes or backlogs. We recommended that the department be more transparent about how long applicants are likely to wait for a decision. This includes setting realistic and reliable service standards and expected processing times.

Despite a commitment in 2016 to better match workload with available staff, the department continued to assign applications to offices without evaluating whether they had enough staff to process them. While digital applications allowed the department to transfer aging applications to other offices better resourced to process them, it had no plans to do so. This leaves backlogged applications to age even further.

In 7 of the 8 permanent resident programs we examined, we found that certain countries of citizenship were overrepresented with respect to application backlogs. In addition, the department did not sufficiently monitor whether the use of its new automated eligibility‑assessment tool produced different results for different groups of applicants. We found that applicants who received an eligibility pass from the tool also received faster decisions, while other applicants continued to wait a long time for a decision.

The department committed to addressing systemic barriers to applicants under its Anti‑Racism Strategy. However, it had yet to take any steps to collect demographic information about applicants and monitor and correct disparities in processing applications. This is critical to identifying and removing systemic barriers across government programs.

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