Public Accounts Committee on May 28th, 2019

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I call the meeting to order. Good morning, everyone.

This is meeting number 139 of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, for Tuesday, May 28, 2019. We are televised today, so for our friends in the audience as well as for all members here, I kindly encourage you to put your cellphones on mute for fewer distractions.

We're here today in consideration of “Report 2—Processing of Asylum Claims”, from the 2019 spring reports of the Auditor General of Canada.

We're pleased to welcome this morning, from the Office of the Auditor General, Monsieur Sylvain Ricard, the Interim Auditor General of Canada; and Ms. Carol McCalla, Principal.

From the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, we have Ms. Lori MacDonald, Acting Deputy Minister; and Mr. Bruce Scoffield, Director General, Immigration Program Guidance Branch.

From Canada Border Services Agency, we have Mr. John Ossowski, President; and Mr. Jacques Cloutier, Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement Branch.

Lastly, from the Immigration and Refugee Board, we have Mr. Richard Wex, Chairperson; and Mr. Greg Kipling, Director General of Policy, Planning and Corporate Affairs.

Welcome to our committee.

We'll begin with our Auditor General, Monsieur Ricard, please.

[Sylvain Ricard, Interim Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General]

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to present the results of our audit report on the processing of asylum claims. Joining me is Carol McCalla, the principal responsible for the audit.

This audit examined how asylum claims were processed by the Canada Border Services Agency, by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, by and the Immigration and Refugee Board, the three main organizations involved in Canada's refugee determination system.

We found that Canada's refugee system has been unable to adjust to spikes in the volume of claims and is again faced with a significant backlog. Claims are not being processed within the 60-day target set by the government, and the backlog and wait times are worse now than when the system was reformed in 2012.

At the time of the audit, we estimated that the backlog would more than double in five years, meaning that families and individuals seeking asylum can expect to wait five years to find out whether they will be granted protection.

The fundamental problem is that the system has a fixed amount of funding to process asylum claims, but the number of claims varies each year. The surge of asylum claims in 2017 quickly outstripped the system's capacity to process them within the required 60 days.

In February 2018, the board announced that it would set aside the 60-day requirement, as permitted by immigration regulations, and schedule hearings according to when claims had been made. By the end of December 2018, expected wait times for a protection decision had reached two years.

This flaw is made worse by a number of administrative issues that frustrate the efficient processing of asylum claims. For example, we found that the three organizations used different computer systems that did not work well together, resulting in important gaps and errors in the information that was shared. Furthermore, none of the organizations had an upfront quality assurance program to ensure the accuracy and completeness of information collected about asylum claimants. This caused a duplication of effort and delays in claim processing, and a reliance on paper files.

We found that almost two thirds of hearings were postponed at least once. The majority of postponements were due to administrative issues within the government's control, such as unavailable board members or delays in security screening. And because new claims were prioritized for a hearing over postponed claims, a single postponement delayed the hearing by an additional five months on average.

Finally, few claims that were eligible for faster processing received quicker decisions. The refugee system allows certain claims to be decided on the basis of a file review rather than a hearing. However, we found that this expedited process was used for only a quarter of eligible claims and was rarely faster than the regular process. The other three-quarters proceeded to regular hearings, and 87% of them received positive decisions. As a result, claims that could have been fast-tracked tied up the system instead.

We made five recommendations. All organizations have agreed with all of them and have shared their action plans with us.

Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening remarks. We would be pleased to answer any questions that the committee may have. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ricard.

We'll now move to Ms. MacDonald, please.

Welcome.

[Lori MacDonald, Acting Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Chair, thank you again for inviting me to address this committee.

Today I am joined by Richard Wex, Chairperson of the Immigration and Refugee Board, known as the IRB, and John Ossowski, President of the Canada Border Services Agency, referred to as the CBSA. Together, in our respective roles, we make up the Asylum System Management Board, which I will describe in greater detail.

We are here today to address recommendations on processing for asylum claims, an area that is the joint responsibility of our three organizations: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, known as IRCC; the Immigration Refugee Board, or IRB; and CBSA.

We will each provide some brief opening remarks, and then we'll be happy to take questions.

We would like to thank the Auditor General for his recommendations, which offer important insights that will allow us to continue improving the asylum system. As the Auditor General's report highlights, Canada's system is being tested. We've seen a significant increase in the number of asylum claims over the past two years—both regular claims made inside Canada and claims made by irregular migrants entering Canada between ports of entry at the Canada-U.S. border. Canada's situation is far from unique in this regard, however. The world is now witnessing unprecedented levels of migration. An estimated 258 million people are on the move, and more than 25.4 million are refugees.

As a result of these trends in global migration, as has been the case in other countries, Canada's asylum system has experienced increased pressure, and increases in global migration suggest that this trend will likely continue. Mr. Chair, this points to the need to ensure that our borders and our asylum system are well managed and properly equipped to address an increase in asylum claims. We are committed to the integrity of our border and asylum system as part of the integrity of our overall immigration system, which is based on rules and orderly migration.

According to the Auditor General's report, our asylum system requires continued efforts to ensure that the system is flexible, that it makes good use of technology, and that this results in greater efficiency and fewer postponements. As noted in the report itself, the government has recognized the need to take action, and this work has begun. More specifically, we are improving coordination between the organizations that administer the system. We are changing the way that claims are processed to increase efficiency while maintaining fairness, and we are making investments, proposed in budget 2019, to increase the system's capacity to process 50,000 claims per year.

Throughout 2018 and continuing now, the government has been taking concrete steps to manage and discourage irregular migration while maintaining focus on the long-term need to improve its productivity and management of the asylum system as a whole. The actions that we have taken are consistent with the balance that the federal government is seeking to achieve between ensuring that Canada is a place for those who genuinely need protection and safeguarding the integrity of our immigration system and the safety of our citizens.

Mr. Chair, we have also taken to heart recommendations from the independent review of the asylum system that was completed last year. These recommendations were focused on how to improve the management and productivity of the IRB and the asylum system as a whole.

One of the key recommendations of this independent review was to improve coordination between the organizations that deliver the asylum system. The Asylum System Management Board was created in part to respond to this need.

The ASMB, as we call it, which was announced publicly in December, functions within the terms of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, within the existing mandates of our organizations and in a manner that is consistent with the adjudicative independence of the IRB. The ASMB is helping maximize efficiencies by ensuring that operational challenges are resolved and that each organization benefits from the information it needs to deliver the system efficiently. The ASMB makes it easier for us to align our collective priorities: planning, resourcing and reporting. Additionally, the ASMB will oversee the adoption of the updated performance targets. These will be used to report on claim volumes, processing capacity and productivity at every step from intake to protection or the removal of a failed claimant.

Last year, the ASMB also supported a pilot project in Montreal called the Integrated Claim Analysis Centre, ICAC, which has demonstrated a new approach to triaging and processing claims. The centre co-locates IRCC and CBSA employees so that they can work together to provide hearing-ready files to decision-makers at the IRB. This approach makes it faster to process claims while ensuring the fairness of decisions. Through the ICAC pilot, our three organizations are working to eliminate duplication and to move claims to the IRB more quickly.

Given this success, we will be implementing a new ICAC pilot in Toronto, which will process the majority of new asylum claims in the national caseload. As announced by the government in its most recent budget, this is one of the key investments to increase capacity of the asylum system.

To support the expanded ICAC and improve program delivery overall, we are enhancing our IT systems. We will make it easier for people to submit the information electronically and to use digital tools.

We will be making the sharing of information between organizations faster and simpler. This will allow us to move from paper files to digital processing, which was identified by the Auditor General as a major need. Through the ICAC, we will also prioritize and track cases through each step of the asylum system.

Together, our organizations have committed to implementing the recommendations we received in the Auditor General's report. This will include seeking greater flexibility in funding, reducing delays in decision-making, making better use of expedited processes and being more proactive in sharing information.

Beyond these measures, we will bring essential new capacity to our organizations, including through investments made in budget 2019 to address pressures felt across the asylum system. A portion of the funding will help manage operations at the border, but the investment clearly recognizes a need to ensure Canada's asylum system can handle higher volumes overall. Budget 2019 invests $1.18 billion over five years starting in 2019-20 and $55 million per year ongoing to double the capacity of the asylum system to 50,000 claims per year as well as to implement the border enforcement strategy. This funding will allow us to respond to the volume of asylum claims that we receive, including those made by both regular and irregular migrants.

In closing, Mr. Chair, we agree with the recommendations in this report and we will continue the work that is already under way with the IRB and CBSA to make the asylum system more efficient without sacrificing its fairness.

We have taken concrete steps to address the issues raised in this report with the view to achieving an asylum system that is fast, fair and final. We have done so on three fronts: through governance and increased collaboration, by increasing the asylum system's capacity through increased funding, and by improving the efficiency and productivity of the asylum system.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. My colleagues and I will be happy to respond to questions the committee might have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Ms. MacDonald.

We'll now turn to Mr. Wex, chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.

[Richard Wex, Chairperson, Immigration and Refugee Board]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am joined today by Mr. Greg Kipling, the Director General of Policy, Planning and Corporate Affairs at the IRB.

I would like to start by thanking the Office of the Auditor General for the report. We were quite pleased to support the audit team during the context of their review, and we very much welcome the report's findings and recommendations.

The report's recommendations are both timely and helpful as the three organizations responsible for processing asylum claims—IRCC, CBSA and the IRB—actively undertake to improve our own operations and, frankly, the system as a whole, in light of our changing operating context. Before turning to the Auditor General's recommendations, therefore, I'd like to spend a minute on the IRB's operating context, which as the audit report makes clear, has changed dramatically over the recent past.

Over the last two years, the board has experienced the largest intake of refugee claims in its 30-year history. As the intake of claims at the IRB significantly outstripped our funded processing capacity, backlogs and wait times naturally grew. In response, a number of measures have been taken over the past year to help address the situation.

First, budgets 2018 and 2019 allocated significant new funds to the IRB to hire additional decision-makers and staff, which will better align the IRB's processing capacity with the projected intake of refugee claims.

The IRB also implemented new measures over the last year to improve productivity, including strengthening our monitoring of performance against productivity targets—we did this on a weekly basis throughout the year—and making changes to our scheduling and case management practices, which enabled the IRB to prioritize certain categories of claims and make more efficient use of our resources.

Together, these measures led to important results. Perhaps most notably, for purposes of today's discussion, the board exceeded its funded target of finalizing some 32,000 refugee claims this past year, fiscal year 2018-19, representing a 30% increase over the previous year's output and the most productive year since the system was reformed in 2012.

While the backlog continues to grow—it's now at 75,000 claims—these recent investments and productivity measures have slowed the growth of the backlog by some 15,000 claims from where it would otherwise have been today, and more importantly, wait times for claimants, while still too high, are now averaging less than two years instead of four years.

Moving forward, we continue to prioritize growth and building our capacity to meet budget 2019 commitments of deciding more than 40,000 refugee claims this year and 50,000 claims next year.

Therefore, the IRB is pursuing a number of initiatives as part of a multi-year plan, which has been informed by third party reviews of the asylum system, including the report by Mr. Yeates that Ms. MacDonald referred to as well as, for purposes of discussion today, the audit that was just completed by the Office of the Auditor General.

Our multi-year plan is centred on three objectives: first, improving productivity; second, enhancing quality and consistency of decision-making; and third, strengthening management, with a focus on a systems-wide approach, in collaboration with both IRCC and CBSA.

Our plan recognizes that more needs to be done to ensure that the IRB—and, frankly, the system as a whole—more effectively and efficiently processes refugee claims. In that context, the IRB very much welcomes and accepts all five of the OAG's recommendations.

First, the IRB agrees with the audit's recommendation that all three organizations should work with the government to design a more flexible funding model that allows the organizations to more quickly access additional funds following sudden spikes in refugee claims. This recommendation, also made in the 2018 Yeates report, as well as permanent funding and developing a contingency workforce are seen by the IRB as critical success factors to reduce the risk of future refugee claim backlogs from developing.

Second, the audit found that information-sharing gaps exist, and manual, paper-based processes result in less efficient processing of claims. The IRB agrees that the three organizations should work together to identify, collect and better share information to process asylum claims and move to digital processing.

This recommendation is aligned with our strategic priorities to improve productivity and enhance quality across the decision-making continuum—for example, shifting to electronic processes to exchange information with counsel and claimants, as well as working with IRCC and CBSA to identify and implement opportunities to enhance the sharing of information by leveraging recent IT investments earmarked in budget 2019.

Third, the IRB agrees with the Auditor General's report that we should explore ways to reduce the number of postponed refugee hearings.

lt is important to highlight, by way of context, that following legislative reforms in 2012, IRCC and CBSA officers who were responsible for referring refugee claims to the IRB had been required to record a specific hearing date in the IRB scheduling system that respected the regulated 60-day scheduling timelines—as referred to by Mr. Ricard—without consideration of the IRB's capacity to hear the case. With the asylum system overwhelmed, the IRB simply did not have sufficient members to hear the cases within the mandated 60 days of a claim being referred to the board. This then resulted in a majority of the cases being rescheduled to a later date.

In response, in 2018 the IRB invoked its regulatory authority to move away from scheduled hearings within the prescribed 60 days and, with the agreement of both IRCC and CBSA, assumed control over its own scheduling. In so doing, the IRB was better able to schedule hearings based on member availability and file readiness. We also began to strategically manage our inventory. For example, we were able to assign cases to members who had developed a certain expertise with certain types of cases, which achieved considerable economies of scale and improved productivity. These changes, along with the hiring of new members through budget 2018 funding, have significantly brought down the number of postponed cases from what was reported correctly in the audit as 65% to what is now, since the audit, 36%.

While progress is being made, it's clear that further opportunities exist, and the IRB agrees with the OAG's recommendation that we should continue to explore ways to reduce the rate of postponements. The board has already begun reviewing its scheduling practices along with its interpreter program and, coupled with hiring additional decision-makers as well as working with IRCC and CBSA to improve file readiness, is committed to further reduce the rate of hearing postponements.

Fourth, the Auditor General's report also found that there were opportunities to take greater advantage of the IRB's authority to decide refugee claims based on a file review without a hearing, and it recommended that we make better use of the tools at our disposal to speed up decisions for eligible refugee claimants. We agree. Indeed, earlier this year, prior to the release of the audit report, I issued new instructions governing the review of less complex claims and established a 25-member task force to review our entire backlog of claims to identify those claims that would be eligible for expedited reviews, either paper file reviews without a hearing or a shorter hearing rather than a regular hearing, under the new instructions.

I am very pleased to report that over 5,000 claims have now been finalized based on these instructions and the work of the task force since January. The Auditor General's report reinforces the importance of taking advantage of these types of tools and pursuing these initiatives. We will continue to stream less complex claims for expedited reviews of both our current backlog as well as new claims as they come forward and are referred to the IRB on an ongoing basis.

Finally, the IRB agrees with the OAG's recommendation concerning ministerial interventions and is committed to working with IRCC and CBSA on this issue.

In closing, I want to thank the OAG for its report. The recommendations are timely, particularly given that my management team and I are squarely focused on maximizing the effectiveness of the IRB and the refugee determination system as a whole. The audit reinforces the importance of a number of actions already under way and highlights a number of additional issues requiring the collective attention of IRCC, CBSA and the IRB.

Thank you Mr. Chair. My colleagues and I will be happy to respond to any questions committee members may have after Mr. Ossowski provides his opening remarks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Wex.

We'll now move to Mr. Ossowski, President of the Canada Border Services Agency.

[John Ossowski, President, Canada Border Services Agency]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm joined today by Jacques Cloutier, Vice-President of the Intelligence and Enforcement Branch of the CBSA. He will assist me in answering any questions members of the committee may have.

I would like to begin by acknowledging the findings of the 2019 spring report of the Auditor General of Canada concerning the in-Canada asylum system. Before I get into some of the details, I would like to quickly provide you with some context, specifically on our current operating environment.

As stated previously by my colleagues, Canada has seen high volumes of asylum claimants since 2017. On average, there are more than 50,000 claims per year.

All persons who seek entry to Canada, including irregular migrants, must be afforded due process under the law and must demonstrate they meet the admissibility requirements. The CBSA ensures that both immigration and customs legislation are applied and that international obligations are respected.

As a result of the Auditor General's findings, the CBSA and the IRCC initiated a comprehensive review of security risk and serious criminality cases. We concluded that in cases showing evidence of criminality at the time the individual made a refugee claim, officers were aware of that information and factored it into their decision-making. We can confirm that none of these individuals represented a threat to Canada and Canadians.

Individuals who enter Canada irregularly are arrested by the RCMP or local law enforcement and brought to either the nearest CBSA port of entry or an inland CBSA or IRCC office for an immigration examination.

To determine the admissibility of claimants, measures such as criminality checks, biographic and biometric verifications and health screenings are applied.

ln addition, front-end security screening is mandatory for adult refugee claimants. lt begins at that point of entry and it must be completed by the time of the IRB hearing date. Various factors such as the complexity of the case, the level of detail provided in an application and responses from CBSA's security screening partners may impact the time required to complete this process.

I should point out that biometrics are primarily used for identity management and verification with our Five Eyes partners, and not only for criminality. Criminality can and is checked through various means, including biometric and biographic checks.

This brings us to the Auditor General's findings and recommendations, which we accept.

The first recommendation, allowing greater flexibility to better respond to the fluctuating volume of claims, is an approach we agree with and have been working towards improving. The CBSA, IRCC and IRB continue to utilize existing funding mechanisms and are working together to explore potential flexible funding approaches to meet current and projected intake.

ln view of the fact that refugee intake has doubled since 2016, our agency, the IRCC and the IRB have already taken a number of innovative approaches to improve the effectiveness of the in-Canada asylum system.

An example of this, addressed in the Auditor General's report, is the reallocation of resources to areas with a higher influx of asylum seekers. This significantly improved the timeliness of security screening.

The Government of Canada has also allocated additional resources to temporarily increase the capacity for refugee intake and for refugee protection decisions.

With regard to the second recommendation, more proactive sharing of information, I can tell you that the CBSA, IRCC and IRB are committed to doing just that.

The CBSA is seeking to provide its partners with timely notification of its intention to either intervene or not in a claim. We remain committed to proactively sharing information, such as previous visa applications and biometrics, with partner countries, all while respecting privacy legislation and information-sharing agreements.

The Integrated Claim Assessment Centre pilot project illustrates our commitment to speed up claims processing and demonstrates effective and proactive information sharing in support of program integrity. We will continue to test innovative approaches to further streamline procedures in an effort to avoid duplication and reduce overall processing times.

The third recommendation is for the three organizations to collaborate on finding ways to more efficiently and securely collect and share refugee claims, with a focus on digital. Again, we are in full agreement.

The CBSA continues to work with the IRCC and the IRB to establish a clear understanding of what, when and how claimant-specific documents are to be shared. We are establishing a quality assurance program to identify unnecessary delays or errors, and we will monitor overall compliance with this approach. Issues such as missing, delayed, incomplete or illegible claimant information are being identified and addressed in a timely manner.

The newly created Asylum System Management Board will ensure effective coordination in the delivery of the asylum system. We will work to implement a horizontal and integrated management approach of the asylum system as a whole. In addition, we will work together with central agencies to identify options and potential mechanisms to further develop IT capabilities in support of improved interoperability, information sharing and client service. Further improvements will be made to existing digital interfaces to provide for the exchange of real-time information among the organizations and to support the shift to a digital processing environment.

Mr. Chair, we firmly believe that people seeking asylum in Canada must be treated with compassion and be afforded due process under the law. We will continue to do so, all while applying the necessary policies and procedures to promptly remove failed refugee claimants, protect our border and respect our domestic and international obligations. The resources identified in the 2019 budget will help enable the processing of additional refugee claims, strengthen processes at the border and accelerate the processing of claims and removals in a timely manner.

In closing, I would like to thank the Auditor General for taking the time to closely examine our current asylum system and for flagging important issues to be addressed in order to better maintain the integrity of our immigration system and the safety of Canadians. The CBSA is committed to working with its partners to further improve the process.

My colleagues and I would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

As the preliminary testimony was fairly lengthy, I will be fairly sharp with the seven minutes. Just as a warning, then, long speeches won't be accommodated.

Mr. Arya, go ahead, please.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. MacDonald, you mentioned certain very important things—that the world is now witnessing unprecedented levels of migration, that 258 million people are on the move, and that more than 25.4 million are refugees. That is a very, very huge thing. You also said that because of this trend, Canada's asylum system has experienced increased pressure, and increases in global migration suggest that this trend will likely continue.

Having already identified that, do you think you have taken the measures to take care of the system going forward?

[Lori MacDonald]

I think one thing the Auditor General's report did for us was to give us a platform to collectively work together to look at those issues that we have been struggling with in terms of the pressures on the system. It also allowed us to do what we would call “deep dives” into the analysis around what is happening around the world and what we see as the impacts on Canada.

An example would be that since 2017, we've been tracking the countries of citizenship of people who have been coming to us, whether regularly or irregularly into the country. We've seen that those countries change year by year. This tells us that like the migration that's happening around the world, it's fluid. It can change at any time. Over the next two years, one thing the funding we've been given will allow us to do is to take that deep dive and do further refinement and finesse to find out what that mean to us in terms of a system and how we use this collective work that we're doing right now, as a result of the recommendations from the OAG, to further advance that work and support our system, going forward, to have one that's robust and able to keep up to the volumes we're seeing.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

My next question is for Ms. McCalla. It may be an unfair question.

Subsequent to your audit, you have seen government taking various measures. You have also seen the responses from all three principals here. In your view, do you think the measures taken since your audit was completed are sufficient?

[Carol McCalla, Principal, Office of the Auditor General]

We have had a chance to review the action plan and the responses to our recommendations, as well as the measures that were put forward in budget 2019, which occurred after our audit had completed.

It is very hopeful that the reforms that need to be made to the system and that we identify in the report will be undertaken. We do appreciate that they will take time. Some of them are two years out. Some of the measures can be taken immediately. Other measures that we pointed to—for example, the delays in security screening—were well under way to being resolved by the time the audit had finished.

In sum, yes, I think we are pleased with what we see and the actions that the departments are proposing.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Mr. Wex, I saw it in your remarks, but I want to ask this again. The reason for postponing 49% of the hearings was that board members were unavailable. The scheduling of hearings is based on the availability of members to hear them. Why is this happening?

[Richard Wex]

Thank you for the question.

That's exactly right. The issue with postponements was the interplay between the 60 days that was required under the regulations and the number of members we had at the time to hear those cases.

The way the practice worked before changes were made was that IRCC or CBSA would receive the file, and then, under the regime, needed to schedule a hearing within the 60-day time period without, unfortunately, any regard to whether there was a member at the IRB able to hear the case. When intake exceeded our processing capacity to such an extent, it was natural that cases would be scheduled with the IRB, but there would not be members to hear those cases. They were understood in the counsel community to be, frankly, notional dates that would then be rescheduled once the IRB took control of the file.

Since the audit, it's interesting to note that two things have happened.

One, the IRB, in collaboration with IRCC and CBSA, took control over its own schedule. Rather than a notional date being established, IRCC or CBSA provided a notice to appear to the claimant, but we set our own schedule in terms of the date on which that individual would appear, and it is aligned with when a member is available.

Two, as a result of budget 2018 investments, we were able to hire more members. Therefore, there were more members available to hear the cases.

As a result of those two variables and our ability to schedule cases that were considered to be more hearing-ready because they were older cases, we were able to, since the audit, reduce the postponement rate from, as I mentioned, 65% to 36%. Whereas member unavailability was a contributing factor during the audit at 49%, that has now come down to 30%. During the audit period, member unavailability was 50% of a 65% problem. Since the audit, it's 30% of a 36% problem, which in real terms means that one out of every 10 or 11 hearings is being postponed now as a result of member unavailability. That number is going down in the right direction.

More work needs to be done, and we have identified the ways we intend to pursue that in the management action plan.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have 30 seconds.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

The next reason for postponed hearings is that the claimant or claimant's counsel is unavailable.

With the recent cut by the provincial government to legal aid, do you think that the 14% due to the claimant’s counsel being unavailable is going to go up? Most of the asylum seekers depend on legal aid for counsel.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Our time is up on that. We might have to work that into a next question.

Mr. Kelly is next, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I want to thank the Auditor General for conducting this audit.

Many people have raised questions about the overwhelming of the refugee system. Many of those questioners have been accused by the minister of being motivated by xenophobia, insinuations of motivation perhaps even by racism, rather than by parliamentarians actually doing their job to understand what the government is doing and whether it has the resources to cope with the problem, whether it's making the right choices to be able to deal with the problem.

I'm pleased that we can have a proper discussion about how the system is working and where its failings are, and there are, clearly, many failings in the system, as identified in this report. I thank you, Mr. Ricard, for doing so.

I heard the opening statements from both Ms. MacDonald and Mr. Wex. Actually, I think it was Mr. Wex's comments that seemed to contradict the finding in the report. It says that we are on track to having up to a five-year delay by 2024, yet in one of the opening statements, I noted that no, we are in fact going the other way, and that we are down under two years and continuing to shrink.

I've heard that you accept the findings of the Auditor General, but the Auditor General says that we are headed toward five-year delays within five years, so please, I'd like this point addressed.

[Richard Wex]

I'm happy to try to assist with providing some clarification.

The OAG found that wait times would have grown to five years. Mr. Ricard can speak to the methodology, as can Ms. McCalla, but I don't think the OAG, at that point, had the opportunity to consider budget 2019 investments. That explains the difference.

Just to be clear, without budget 2019, I would agree with the OAG's findings that—

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

Thank you. That gives me the answer.

Will the funding announced in the budget clear the backlog, and if so, when?

[Richard Wex]

What we're focused on in terms of the next 24 months with the temporary funding in budgets 2018 and 2019 is not to eliminate the backlog; it is to position ourselves to eliminate the backlog. It is to slow the growth of the pace of the backlog from what it would otherwise be.

To make this very straightforward—because there's a lot of math—without budgets 2018 and 2019, over the next couple of years the backlog would have grown to 165,000. Wait times, frankly, would have been even greater than five years. With the temporary investments, we considerably slow the pace of growth of the backlog from where it is today to where it will be in 24 months.

The wait times will stay approximately the same. We are in a stage now, for the next 24 months, to manage the growth of the backlog. It's not to eliminate the backlog, but to position ourselves to eliminate the backlog once the backlog stabilizes.

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

If I understand you correctly, the current funding is going to allow the rate of growth of the backlog to shrink and reach an equilibrium wherein there will be a two-year delay.

[Richard Wex]

What you're saying is correct, as I understand it. We are now growing. We are in ramp-up mode to grow the organization and to produce sufficient output over the next two years to meet projected intake. Right now, this year, we're funded to determine 40,000 claims. We expect claims to be higher than that, and by next year, we expect intake will approximately match our funded processing capacity, so that the backlog growth stops.

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

Two years from now the growth in the backlog will finish growing and we will merely have a backlog of 75,000—