Public Accounts committee  With respect to the immigration division, immigration detention reviews continue to take place. With respect to the refugee protection division, less complex claims were considered. These are claims that can be considered and resolved without a hearing in certain cases. That ta

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I'd like to inform the committee that for the year to date, the board has processed and rendered over 18,000 decisions across the four divisions. In fact, the board resumed operations as of June, when in-person hearings began. Most in-person hearings were suspended as

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I hope this is better. One of the silver linings of the pandemic, in fact, has been that we've been able to accelerate our ability to become a remote organization. We launched a pilot to hold remote hearings in the latter months of the summer, which ended u

Public Accounts committee  Going forward, for the balance of the year, the majority of the hearings will be held remotely such that, to answer your question with respect to the number of claimants that we expect to finalize at the refugee protection division—

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, we have a strong system interface with IRCC, which is also shared with CBSA, with respect to decisions issued on the refugee side—refugee decisions that are issued every night. There's a run on the system, and the disposition of the decisions is uploaded on a nightly b

Public Accounts committee  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 rec

Public Accounts committee  That's right, and I am trying to say that. Although the Auditor General's reports were helpful, we already were seized of this. As an example, the Auditor General has recommended that we pursue finalizing and reviewing less complex claims—expedited claims. That, in fact, is som

Public Accounts committee  We've looked at the entire decision-making continuum, as Ms. MacDonald pointed out, from re-engineering the front end intake all the way to recourse. We've introduced a number of productivity and efficiency measures. It's difficult to quantify, of course, but the task force alone

Public Accounts committee  I can tell you—and I would echo the thoughts and comments of Ms. MacDonald—that the folks here at this table are absolutely seized of this issue and have been since they have been in their positions. Although the Auditor General's report has been extremely helpful to us, I can't

Public Accounts committee  I'm pleased to report the result of the work of the task force that was established within the Immigration and Refugee Board. Those 32,000 claims were holdover claims from the system's reforms in 2012. All new claims after the system reforms were subject to those 60-day time peri

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, as the member pointed out, budget 2019 follows investments in budget 2018 with $208 million. This will allow the IRB, over the next 24 months, to staff an additional 450 people, in addition to the 250 from budget 2018. Those monies are being allocated to hire additiona

Public Accounts committee  No, we are no longer scheduling within the 60-day time period as a matter of course. We have found that we've been able to find increased efficiencies and improved productivity with a more balanced scheduling practice that allows us to move forward with assigning files to members

Public Accounts committee  A combination of measures is going to be required. Just to be very clear, over the next 24 months we are focused on stabilizing the backlog with the recent investments of over $200 million for the board over the next two years. It will allow us to ramp up—but only at the pace tha

Public Accounts committee  As I mentioned earlier, this is precisely why the government has recently invested in the whole system— IRCC, CBSA and the IRB—as a result of the influx that occurred, largely in 2017. That resulted in investments in budgets 2018 and 2019. In budget 2018, the IRB was able to pr

Public Accounts committee  If intake was at 25,000, and we will be funded at 50,000 over the course of the next 24 months, at that point, year over year, we'll be able to reduce the backlog by 25,000. Because you're funded at 50,000 and only 25,000 are coming in, that gives you an additional 25,000 reducti