I believe this goes back to one of the fundamental findings the Auditor General identified in the report and that previous reviews have identified, which is a flexible funding model.
What does that mean? Right now, this coming year, we're funded for over 40,000 claims, and next year for 50,000, but let's say that through the Asylum System Management Board that Ms. MacDonald has been speaking about, we see after the first quarter of the year that we don't have 15,000 claims, but 20,000 or 22,000. We would then be able, on that basis of performance tracking, to inform central agencies, such as Treasury Board and others, that our forecast was off. At that point we could be able to access additional funds because the intake was higher than we had forecast.
That's opposed to what happens now, which is that we wait the entire year, even though we can see the trend increasing, and at the end of the year we say, “Guess what? We had 70,000 claims instead of 45,000 claims. Let's put together a funding proposal for the government to consider in their annual budget.” Then the budgetary discussions take place, and we may or may not get funded.
If we do, it may or may not be 100 cents on the dollar, and it's earmarked. Funding comes later in the spring and summer, and then we're ramping up. At that point we're 18 months down the road. Then we have to recruit, hire, train. Then we're two years down the road before we hit productivity numbers, and we've created a real backlog.
This has been the history of our refugee determination system from time to time over the past 30 years. A flexible funding model, as the OAG recommends, would be a success factor to help prevent backlogs from accruing.