Thank you, Madam Chair.
I am joined today by Ms. Heather Primeau, who is the director general of strategic directions and corporate affairs. I would like to start by thanking the committee for the opportunity to speak with you today.
Before jumping into the issues at hand, I would like to provide you with a brief overview of the Immigration and Refugee Board's mandate. For those of you less familiar with the IRB, we are Canada's largest independent administrative tribunal. Our mandate is to make well-reasoned decisions on immigration and refugee matters fairly, efficiently and in accordance with the law. The IRB is made up of four separate tribunals, which are known as divisions. They are the refugee protection division, the refugee appeal division, the immigration division and the immigration appeal division.
It is the refugee protection division, or RPD, that is responsible for hearing and deciding claims made in Canada for refugee protection. In keeping with our international legal obligations, as implemented through the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, RPD decision-makers decide who is a convention refugee or a person in need of protection. In rendering decisions, RPD decision-makers take into account whether an individual has a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, political opinion, nationality or membership in a particular social group. Decisions are made based on the merits of the specific facts presented in an individual case and in accordance with Canada's immigration laws.
The IRB's role within Canada's refugee determination system then is to make decisions that conform to Canada's law. It is not responsible for developing Canada's policies and priorities as they relate to immigration and refugee matters. This is the responsibility of Canada's Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.
The IRB recognizes that its decisions are always life-changing and impact the lives and security of individuals who appear before it. To provide fair and efficient adjudicative justice, the IRB regularly monitors conditions in refugee-producing countries. The IRB has a world-class research directorate that produces national documentation packages on all countries from which the IRB receives claims, including Hong Kong. The NDPs comprehensively cover the human rights situations in the country, are updated regularly and are publicly available.
Based on the IRB's monitoring activities, all refugee claims from Hong Kong are currently being actively examined and case management strategies are being utilized to promote their efficient determination. Namely, claims from Hong Kong have been identified for triage as part of the IRB's task force on less complex claims. This means that based on current country conditions, the IRB has identified claims made by Hong Kong nationals as suitable to be determined without a hearing or with a short hearing if there are only one or two key determinative issues to be resolved. If there are more complicated questions of credibility or identity, then such cases will not be able to be addressed as less complex but will be decided with a regular hearing.
This type of case management strategy is in keeping with the IRB's past responses and relies on its knowledge of country conditions and claim types. Such strategies increase the efficiency of the refugee determination system by allocating an amount of preparation and hearing room time that is proportionate to the complexity of each unique claim. From January 1, 2020, to February 19, 2021, the RPD finalized 28 asylum claims from residents of Hong Kong with fewer than 20 claims still pending.
In the context of today's session, it is worth briefly examining what the Immigration Refugee Protection Act says about criminality. A foreign national maybe inadmissible to Canada on the grounds of criminality. However, foreign convictions are examined to see whether they would be considered offences under Canadian law if they had occurred in Canada.
In conclusion, I would like to emphasize the fact that the IRB takes its responsibility to render all decisions fairly, consistently and efficiently very seriously. This extends to ensuring that it continuously monitors country conditions to ensure that each and every person claiming refugee status in Canada has access to meaningful adjudicative justice.
Madam Chair, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.