Thank you, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee.
I am accompanied today by Greg Kipling, deputy chair of the Immigration Division.
I'd like to begin by thanking the Office of the Auditor General of Canada for its report and the information it provides.
While none of the recommendations in the report are directed to the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, we are pleased to be able to tell you about our organization and the relationship between the board's work and the Canada Border Services Agency's removals program. We will also be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
Before getting to the heart of the matter, I'd like to give you an overview of our mandate, our current operating context and the board's strategic directions.
The IRB is Canada's largest independent administrative tribunal, with a mandate to resolve immigration and refugee cases fairly, efficiently and in accordance with the law.
We have a staff of some 2,000 across the country, including some 500 adjudicators, and a current budget of approximately $300 million a year. As well, we're a high-volume administrative tribunal issuing some 60,000 cases a year across our four separate divisions.
The board's decisions are almost always life-changing, from deciding whether someone is granted refugee protection from the country against which they are alleging persecution, to deciding whether an individual is inadmissible to and, therefore, removable from Canada, to whether someone detained by CBSA for immigration-related reasons should continue to have their liberty restricted or be released into the community.
The board's mandate is important both at an individual level by virtue of the nature of its decisions, but also at a broader level in playing an important role in upholding Canadians' confidence in our immigration and refugee determination systems.
As many of you are no doubt aware, our operating context has been quite challenging over the past few years. Much like elsewhere around the world, Canada's asylum system has faced significant pressure, with refugee claims growing exponentially and far exceeding the funded capacity to process such claims. This has resulted in evergrowing inventories and longer wait times, raising questions around access to justice and public confidence in the system as a whole.
In response to these and other challenges, in early 2019 the IRB developed and implemented a fairly ambitious multi-year growth and transformation agenda. In terms of growth, budget 2019 provided some $200 million in additional temporary funding over two years for the IRB to address the recent surge in asylum claims and slow the growth of the refugee claims inventory and wait times from where they would otherwise be.
As we work to grow the organization and maximize the use of these temporary investments, we're also focused on transformation, as defined by three strategic directions. First, we're focused on improved productivity characterized by a culture of increased operational awareness and results.
Second, we're focused on enhanced quality in decision-making, and third, we're focused on strength in management, including, as my colleague Ms. Tapley just mentioned, improved governance through the Asylum System Management Board with IRCC and the CBSA, which allows us to work through common issues requiring coordinated responses.
I'm pleased to report that results to date across all four divisions have met or exceeded ambitious performance targets, including those associated with the recent investments in budget 2019. At the refugee protection division, for example, the board finalized over 42,000 refugee claims last year, some 10,000 more claims than in 2018-19. The board finalized some 11,000 refugee appeals, more than double the number of appeals finalized at the refugee appeal division the previous year. Of course, these gains represent better access to justice for tens of thousands of people waiting for certainty in their lives.
The audit under consideration deals with immigration removals. Removal orders or decisions that impact whether removal orders are brought into effect are issued by each of the IRB divisions. They cover a range of potential circumstances, including those where the board finds someone to be inadmissible, or where refugee claimants are ultimately found not to be in need of protection.
The effectiveness of CBSA's removals program is based in part on the timely sharing of such IRB decisions. The audit examined the sharing of such IRB decisions with the CBSA in the context of their removal program, and I was reassured that the OAG found no issues with the information shared by the IRB. That said, we are committed to and are currently taking steps to further strengthen our information sharing practices with both IRCC and the CBSA across the immigration and refugee determination system.
Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. My colleague, Mr. Kipling, and I are available for your questions.
Thank you.