Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 20th, 2018

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Of the 24 vacancies—I believe that's the current number of vacancies in the IRB—what is your turnaround time for filling these positions?

[Donnalyn McClymont]

Our goal is to fill them as quickly as possible. I will be honest with you, though, that it can take anywhere from five to seven months to fill a spot on an adjudicative tribunal. That's why we have a constant intake model to try to expedite that as much as possible, being very cognizant of the needs of the IRB currently.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Looking at the number of vacancies, 24, in relation to the 70 that have been appointed, would you not say that's a number that's quite high in terms of vacancies, or is that normal in terms of inventory of vacancies in the last, say, three to five years?

[Donnalyn McClymont]

The one thing I would say to the committee in terms of the vacancies, and I think Mr. Aterman was beginning to explain this a bit to Mr. Tilson, is that there is nothing specific in the legislation in terms of the number of positions that have to be filled. The vacancies you see, that 24 is really our working number that we've come to with the IRB in terms of what we understand are positions that remain open, if you will. We send them a monthly report and we do a quarterly update with them to determine what their actual needs are at that moment in time. I would suspect, given the pressures that they're under and the influx of new resources, that we will be revising that number to reflect that need.

We are quite determined to try to fill as many spots as possible to support them as best we can.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you.

Mr. Tilson.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like, again, to proceed with this piece that was written for Global News by Messrs Hill and Russell. I outlined the conduct of board member Sterlin, and I'm not going to repeat it. Quite frankly, I think he should have been fired. I think his conduct was terrible.

My question to you is, how bad does the behaviour have to be to get fired?

[Donnalyn McClymont]

I would point to two sections in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that deal specifically with termination of members, and I can speak only to the Governor in Council appointees, because we do not work with the IRB in terms of public servants.

What I would say, Madame Chair, is that termination with cause—because they are good-behaviour appointees.... I don't want to get too technical, but for those of you who are aware of how appointments are made, the large majority of GIC appointees serve at pleasure, which means—

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

How bad does the conduct have to be to get fired?

[Donnalyn McClymont]

Right. These appointees at the Immigration and Refugee Board serve at good behaviour, and to be quite frank, the only way they can be removed is for cause. So you have to assess, and when I say assess, I mean an investigation has to be conducted to make a determination—

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Do you have guidelines for cause?

[Donnalyn McClymont]

The bar would have to be that they had done something that went well beyond the terms and conditions of appointment, or that was not consistent with the manner in which we expect GIC appointees to conduct themselves. We would look to the minister to provide the GIC appointee with a recommendation after, quite frankly, doing a formal investigation to assess whether or not the bar of cause had been met.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

What's involved in removing a GIC appointment?

[Donnalyn McClymont]

It's quite in-depth, as I said, particularly for those who serve at good behaviour. We would be expected to make a clear determination of cause, and in order to do so, we would have to do an investigation, and again, it would be triggered by the minister making a recommendation to the Governor in Council.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

We've heard complaints or concerns about appointments, both Conservative appointments and Liberal appointments, and that most of the IRB appointments are essentially political favours to those who support whichever government. Both governments have been criticized for that.

What process is in place to ensure that these are not simply appointments done as favours?

[Donnalyn McClymont]

Mr. Chair, I do believe, and I would emphasize with the committee, that, as I mentioned, I know you're focused on the IRB, but we've had over 20—

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Well, that's what we're talking about, so if you could stick to comments about the IRB.... I don't really care about other things right now.

[Donnalyn McClymont]

Absolutely, yes. For sure.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

The IRB is what we're interested in.

[Donnalyn McClymont]

Sure. In terms of appointments, I would just say we've had tremendous interest from Canadians across the country with regard to the appointments we've had. I couldn't get into specifics. I could say, in orders of magnitude, there have been well over 500 applications for the IRB. So there's a lot of interest from people across the country who've applied.

I do think, as I mentioned in my comments, that we have quite a rigorous process. The selection committee looks at every single applicant to determine if they meet the selection criteria set out in the public notice of opportunity. We conduct exams, and as I said, the exam that the IRB has in place right now is pretty tough. Then we do interviews.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Can the minister of whichever government is in power overrule that and say, “This is a good guy,” or “This is a good gal. I want this person to be an IRB hearing officer”?

[Donnalyn McClymont]

Advice is provided to the minister in terms of the various people who the committee deems qualified for the opportunities. If the minister chooses to go off of that letter and make a recommendation that is not provided to the committee, the minister has to provide a justification to the Prime Minister as to why they would do that. I've never seen that happen.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Right.

What has led to the high vacancy rate at the IRB?

[Donnalyn McClymont]

Mr. Chair, as I explained to colleagues, we work with the IRB to determine their needs. We're in a constant process of doing that. As Mr. Aterman just mentioned, we just made some appointments, 12 last week. We're constantly working to try to make appointments.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Is the Privy Council Office acting as a bottleneck?

[Donnalyn McClymont]

I would certainly hope not.