Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Good morning. My name is Shereen Benzvy Miller. As of early May, I am the deputy chairperson of the refugee protection division at the Immigration and Refugee Board, or the IRB. I'm accompanied by Greg Kipling, director general of policy, planning,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For those who are not familiar with what we refer to as “legacy” cases, those are cases that are backlogged from before the time of the reform of the legislation, before 2012. There were originally close to 40,000 of those cases, but a little over 5,000 remain to be adjudicated.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You mean, in terms of legislation, are we still within the legislation?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, we are. We are within the legislation because the legislation does have timelines—30 days, 45 days, and 60 days—but it also allows for a fourth category of exception, which is for operational need. We currently have over 40,000 cases in backlog, and essentially, the aver

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it's safe to say it will increase. It's a mathematical calculation: the number of cases, the number of members and hearing rooms available to hear those cases, and the length of time it takes. We have put efficiencies in place to ensure that we are effective in doing tr

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It is a dollar issue, and it is a combination, obviously, of members, hearing rooms, and staff. You need to support hearings. There's a lot of process around scheduling and other things to support the member's decision. We're in the process now of trying to figure out what the g

Citizenship and Immigration committee  First of all, that 11 years was actually not put out by our department. That's not a calculus based on our numbers. It was based on IRCC departmental numbers. I am not sure how that 11 years was calculated, but it is a question of calculus, if you look at increases of.... I think

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We don't actually have a fixed projection. It's just more than 40,000. We just got 8,000, so, I don't know, 48,000 maybe.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's actually something we have never contemplated. We make all of our projections based on the law as it is. We are a tribunal, so we make no policy assumptions. We just apply the law as it is, and that's how we make all of our projections.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It depends. There may be other factors that come into play. I can't speak to fictitious scenarios.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The order in council appointments are for our appellate members, so they don't really impact our first-level response, which is essentially the decisions that are made about whether somebody is a refugee or not.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Right now our vacancy I think is 23. Do we have 23 vacancies right now?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We could, absolutely.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Your question is on how many the response team has dealt with to date.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have about 300 finalizations.