We co-manage the program with IRCC and CSIS.
One thing we've struggled with is how to balance efficiency and effectiveness. We want to make sure we can make timely decisions. Some take too long, but we also need to be effective in terms of ensuring national security. Part of the challenge we face, as I said, is some decisions taking too long.
The other challenge we face, quite frankly, is the volume. We've gone from about 50,000 people in our inventory, around 2022 and 2023, to about 183,000. At the same time, our decision-making has gone up. We made 106,000 decisions last year, but we haven't kept up with the volumes coming in. We are looking at how we can become more effective in terms of working through them. We can do simple stage-one applications in a maximum of two days. Other, more complex ones can take 14 days or more, but we need to get our hands on them. That means getting the inventory down.
We have two large pools. One is visa applicants, and those come to us based on referrals from IRCC. We also do 100% of in-Canada asylum seekers. What we're moving to is a more risk-based approach, similar to what we do with visa applicants. We're looking at how we can use indicators. Based on country profiles and our assessment of risk—working with CSIS—how can we more rapidly say, “This file doesn't need the full-blown review,” so we'll move it on and come to a decision more quickly? By making those decisions more quickly, we can then turn our attention to files that require more work. We're optimistic that we can put a significant dent in our asylum numbers this fiscal year, which will allow us, then, to put more energy into all the files we have before us.
In terms of the students themselves, last year we had about 180,000 in our inventory. We had about 1,800 files referred to us as students and made 1,200 decisions over that same period. It's not where we want to be, but we recognize that we need to do more in this space.