Public Accounts Committee on May 28th, 2019

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Great. Thank you.

You can see all of us are just.... I'm not overly impressed with things like “enhanced efficiencies”. I've been around politics for an awfully long time, and I know that means exactly nothing, so I do have some concerns.

I have a question—and Auditor General, this is going to be one of those you don't like, because it's outside the normal box, but if you're comfortable with it, I'd like you to comment also.

We're looking at a backlog of 100,000. If we manage well and do a really good job, we'll have a backlog of only 100,000. Let's just pretend there's an election coming, and let's further pretend that there are political parties that might want to do something about this.

How much money would it take up front, 100% dedicated to this problem, to eliminate that 100,000 and get us back to where we should be? What would that dollar figure look like?

I'd like your thoughts, please, first from the deputy and whoever she wants to defer to, but then the Auditor General, if you're comfortable. I realize it's up in the air, but give it a shot, please.

[Lori MacDonald]

There are two important things for me.

One of the things that's helping us right now is that we got this two-year funding, the $1.18 billion, because over the next two years, all of these pieces that we've been talking about here this morning are.... Each month we are learning from these and we are achieving more efficiency, so over the course of the next 24 months, as we go through this process, we'll have a much better understanding of what we have and haven't been able to achieve in terms of efficiencies.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Deputy, I appreciate that, but with the greatest of respect, please answer my question. To clear a backlog of 100,000, what are we looking at? Is it a billion dollars? What number would it take if a political party wanted to put it in their platform? What is that number?

[Lori MacDonald]

I haven't costed that number out. I could tell you that—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Help me. Give me some idea. A couple of billion dollars isn't getting us too far, so...?

[Lori MacDonald]

If you take $1.18 billion, that's going to help us get a hold of the backlog. You can extrapolate from that.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Get a hold of it.

[Lori MacDonald]

You can extrapolate from that number that it's going to be in the $2-billion range, but I don't have a costing figure for it.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Auditor General, I noticed that in one of the paragraphs you do mention that you looked at some funding. It was relative to a specific part of your report. I appreciate that these are difficult waters for you because your business is precision, but can you help us at all, sir?

[Sylvain Ricard]

Well, in paragraph 2.3, we do refer to the fact that they had a funding base of $216 million. That will not be exact funds. I will refer to the organization to come up with some numbers at some point, but we do refer to the fact that $216 million was what I'll call the base funding. Then there was additional funding to increase the capacity to 32,000, I think it was, by adding $174 million.

Using that math could help with having a ballpark figure in terms of how much you need to deal with the situation. With the additional $174 million, I think you end up at 32,000 in capacity, and we need to go up to 50,000. We assume that 50,000 is the normal amount every year. Using that, someone could maybe estimate a ballpark figure of how much you would need to then deal with the backlog.

[Richard Wex]

Maybe I'll just help out on this, because there are numbers that—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Please be very quick.

[Richard Wex]

To answer the question, there are so many variables in play. Nothing is static. Both Ms. MacDonald and the Auditor General are correct in what they're saying, but if you look at 100,000, you can calculate per claim what it would cost to bring that number down. It's not in the billions; it's in the hundreds of millions—perhaps $300 million or 400 million.

The point here is that these monies would need to be spent in any event because these claims are coming in. It's not because there's a wait time or a backlog; from an IRB perspective, the cost is the same. Whether there's a backlog or not, these claims would be presented to the board, and we would need to process them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Christopherson, you had one other thing.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

First of all, it makes my head explode, I have to tell you. I agree that it's been around so long, and there's no easy answer. You folks are very good at giving answers that don't get us very far, and you're not doing it deliberately. You can only do the best you can.

I want to mention one last thing, though, to underscore the argument about how devastating it is that the Auditor General's office is not getting the funding it needs to do its audits. The deputy mentioned in her comments that “The audits allowed us”. I'm going to continue to point out the benefits of having these audits, because the current government's intent is to not provide sufficient funding to the Auditor General to do this very work.

Thanks, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you for closing off on that note.

We'll now move to Mr. Kelly, please, and then Mr. Chen.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you.

I wanted to get a little more clarity. Mr. Christopherson asked for a dollar figure that would actually clear the backlog, but I noted that the answer we got back was regarding what it is expected to take to merely get to a point of equilibrium where the backlog doesn't get longer. I don't think that's what anybody's goal should be, for reasons that have come out already. We all know from our constituency office work the impact that the backlogs have on lives in our communities.

The only thing that will shrink the backlog and actually clear our lists—based on the current funding, which is something that we can control—is an actual reduction in the number of asylum claimants. Is that what both agencies are more or less hoping or relying upon to make real progress and actually shrink the backlog, rather than just shrink the rate of growth of the backlog?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Go ahead, Mr. Wex.

[Richard Wex]

A combination of measures is going to be required. Just to be very clear, over the next 24 months we are focused on stabilizing the backlog with the recent investments of over $200 million for the board over the next two years. It will allow us to ramp up—but only at the pace that we are able to ramp up, frankly—to develop a processing capacity to meet the intake. At that point, you are correct that the backlog, based on forecasts of 60,000 claims in a year—it may not be that many—will be around 100,000.

At that point the government will have options available to it, including, as has been done in the past, providing dedicated funding to reduce the backlog, because at that point the backlog is no longer growing. To reduce the backlog of 100,000, it is correct to say that based on how much it costs to process a claim, including both the refugee protection division and the appeal division, it's been calculated to be between some $200 million and $400 million, depending on various variables.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

You were quite candid in your remarks about the system being overwhelmed and not having the capacity to deal with the influx of claims. Had this been adequately conveyed to the minister?

[Richard Wex]

As I mentioned earlier, this is precisely why the government has recently invested in the whole system— IRCC, CBSA and the IRB—as a result of the influx that occurred, largely in 2017. That resulted in investments in budgets 2018 and 2019.

In budget 2018, the IRB was able to process an additional 10,000 claims as a result of those investments, a little more than what it previously was able to process. The truth is that in 2018 and now in 2019, the IRB would not have been in a position to grow beyond what those investments provided. It's not a large organization, and over the course of three years we're growing from 1,000 people to 2,000 people.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

The reason I asked the question about whether the minister was aware of his system being overwhelmed is that he spent considerable energy dismissing claims that Canada was not prepared and not able to deal with the claims that came in and that the intake of claims was resulting in lengthening wait times, which was unfair to people who were relying on the system to be able get their hearing.

We're in extra rounds now, so unless there's a further comment, I'll leave it there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I would just build a little on Mr. Kelly.

One of the advantages of being in the chair is I get questions on occasion—not necessarily now, but on occasion—that we may want to see in the study. We've already asked the question about the amount of money that would be needed to mitigate the increasing backlog. If the asylum-seeker number was down at 30,000.... According to the AG, with 50,400 claims, more than double the number from the previous year—he's talking back in 2016-17—and with 55,000 in 2018, if we had asylum seekers at 25,000 or 30,000, how quickly would the backlog be in check?

[Richard Wex]

If intake was at 25,000, and we will be funded at 50,000 over the course of the next 24 months, at that point, year over year, we'll be able to reduce the backlog by 25,000. Because you're funded at 50,000 and only 25,000 are coming in, that gives you an additional 25,000 reductions in the backlog. That would reduce the backlog in less than four years.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

We'll now move to Mr. Chen.