It is both.
Evidence of meeting #46 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was iad.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #46 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was iad.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:45 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Chairperson (IAD), Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada
It is in terms of both wait time and efficiency.
9:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada
The organization of a hearing entails ensuring the presence of a member, sometimes of an interpreter, of the appellant, of the appellant's lawyer and of the representative of the department. All of these individuals must be in one and the same place at the same time. The organization of all of that takes time, whereas, in the case of a written decision, one need only present the file to a member. He or she may deal with it in the course of a work day.
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
9:45 a.m.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
It sounds as though there are a lot of figures. For a year or two I was trying to get to these numbers through then Standing Order 43 to find out how many were approved and how many were not, meaning the 30% approved and the 40% dismissed.
Do you have an annual report that gives all these figures for the last five years, for example, broken down by country, on how many were approved through the alternative dispute resolutions, etc., and lessons learned on each of them? Do you have that kind of data? I think the two previous questioners asked a lot about data. I haven't been able to obtain the data, even through Standing Order 43. Does your organization have a report with all this information?
9:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada
I'm just going by memory. The report on plans and priorities definitely does not go into that level of detail, and I believe that our departmental performance report does not go into that level of detail. Both of those, of course, are documents tabled in Parliament.
9:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada
We don't publish a document that goes into that level of detail, but for our own internal purposes we look at the numbers. We can provide those numbers to the committee after this morning's session, by all means.
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
9:45 a.m.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
Of the decisions you made--the 30% that were approved--let's say 5% of them were from the visa office in Hong Kong, just for argument's sake. There would be learning from that region, because some of the visa officers might ask for more information or provide the entire reason that they were turned down, and that would go back to the visa office. Is there a study or a process in place so that we could consistently improve the system based on what you learn?
9:50 a.m.
Executive Director, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada
We do not see, as part of our responsibilities as an independent administrative tribunal, telling CIC that this is a lesson we think they should learn. We expect that CIC would pick that up from our decisions.
On the other piece, I would echo what Ms. Ross said. At an appeal level, just because the appeal level overturns the first decision--
9:50 a.m.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
I totally understand that it's not your role to do that, but do you provide a reporting system so that if the deputy minister chose to or if we asked him to or if the minister wanted to, they could take the information and assist the regional officers to perhaps have a different way of asking questions or making decisions?
9:50 a.m.
Joel Rubinoff Legal Advisor, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada
Excuse me. It's my understanding that our decision of the IRB, whether we uphold or—
9:50 a.m.
Legal Advisor, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada
—allow or reject an appeal goes back to the visa post. They would see the decision and they would be able to look at the decision and decide whatever they wished to do with respect to whatever remedy they wanted to take from our reasons for the decision.
9:50 a.m.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
I see. Then I really shouldn't be asking you the question; I should be asking the other folks whether they then take the findings.
What period was it that you did not have the full complement of members and consequently a backlog of cases developed?
9:50 a.m.
Executive Director, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada
That would have been over the last four or five years. It was the same phenomenon, as the committee is aware, that we had at the refugee protection division. Both the IAD and the refugee protection division are Governor in Council appointees. That period of time when we were experiencing a lack of members in the RPD was the same period of time that we were experiencing a lack of members in the IAD.
9:50 a.m.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
As a result, your backlog grew. Prior to that, how fast were you resolving cases? Right now it's over 13 months, at least, for an oral appeal. Right now it's one and a half years or so to get the case resolved. If I filed the appeal today, one and a half years later it would be done. That's about the average.
What was it four or five years ago, on average?
9:50 a.m.
Executive Director, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada
I believe a chart was provided to the committee ahead of time in which we provided the average processing times for appeals by fiscal year. In this case it was by calendar year. For example, in 2005 our average processing time for sponsorship appeals was 8.4 months, and it has grown now to 11.2 months. Of course, part of this is the result of the increase in volume as well.
9:50 a.m.
Executive Director, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada
As the mix changes, that can also have an impact.
9:50 a.m.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
I haven't seen that chart, Mr. Chair.
Okay, you mean that one. Thank you.
A timeframe of 11.2 months is still fairly long. I see that you have various pilot projects, etc. As part of your work plan in 2011-2012, what would be your ideal timeframe? For a while, when you first started, it was six months. It was a much shorter period, wasn't it? Then it just grew. What would you need to clear the backlog and actually go back to, let's say, six months on average? What would you need in order to do so?
9:50 a.m.
Executive Director, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada
Given the volume of files that we have, we would probably need to almost double the size of the organization in order to clear out the backlog. In the current financial climate, we recognize that's not likely to happen.
