Thank you, Madam Chair and committee, for inviting the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization to share our experience regarding the backlogs of IRCC file processing times.
For 45 years, OCISO, working in partnership with IRCC, has been supporting newcomers settling in Ottawa. We have dealt with many complexities related to immigration waves from different sourcing countries. Today we would like to highlight the challenges related to two specific immigration classes within the general stream: the backlogs for government-assisted refugees', or GARs', citizenship applications and PR renewals, and also the backlogs for refugee claimant processing times.
Most GARs are vulnerable, multibarrier clients, with a high percentage of disability cases. Most of them have challenges in language and digital literacy. As we appreciate the launch of the online application system of IRCC, we also acknowledge that these clients cannot navigate the systems by themselves. Rather, they depend on our settlement practitioners to help them in processing PR renewals or citizenship applications and to provide responses in cases of delays.
The backlog has extended to two years for decisions on citizenship and to six months or more for PR renewals. Because of repercussions and for their security and safety, GARs cannot return to their sourcing country or be reunited with their families until they have Canadian citizenship and passports. In the meantime, we have noticed that the applications submitted post-COVID, in 2021, were prioritized and finalized, whereas applications from 2019 and 2020 are still pending.
We've tracked some cases requiring disability accommodation for hearing and for speaking, but they could not be processed for months, whether it was for their citizenship test or the citizenship ceremony. Our practitioners struggle to get responses via the web form supplied or in reaching an agent over the phone. There are children attached to adults with delayed processing times. There was no option to process their independent files without finishing those of the parents. This is combined with the economic challenges of the costs of the application process for GARs.
Today, OCISO recommends to this committee and to IRCC doable solutions that might work, such as adopting the same approach as the CRA, where a help desk for non-profits and volunteers was initiated during the tax season. We suggest that IRCC create a helpline regarding overdue processing times that is accessible only by organization-specific codes for settlement practitioners and non-profits in order to get responses to attend to our clients. We also suggest freezing for a few months all of the new applications for citizenship to finish the queue of the backlog for the previous years, and then starting to accept new files after clearing all of those queued behind.
We have a dream, and we are sharing it with you today. We look forward to the future innovation of artificial intelligence to triage the applications, whereby the components of the applications are in view of the CRA, the CBSA, security clearance and the IRCC, all linked via an intragovernmental network, so that the system, by itself, can sort out and finalize the complete packages automatically, minimizing the processing time and the workload on different immigration officers and their human inputs into the revision of those files.
I now want to reference the refugee claimants.
The backlog to get the work permit is now up to one year. It is a fact that refugee claimants are usually skilled and ready for employment, but for one year, everything is frozen for them. They are not able to have a driver's licence issued, to work or to study in universities. They live on income assistance, which in itself is a load on taxpayers and the government. Without residency status, they are not able to leave the country, bring in their families or process any application for reunification with their loved ones.
OCISO's recommendation is for IRCC to grant open work permits right away to all claimants to alleviate the pressure until the processing of their case is done. We are asking for this as it aligns with the approach adopted by IRCC regarding the Canada-Ukraine authorization for emergency travel, CUAET, which was a successful experience. It put them into employability immediately. We hope to apply this to all refugee claimants as well.
Thank you very much.