CIMM – Responses to the OAG’s Report on Permanent Residents – February 28, 2024

Processing Applications for Permanent Residence (2022)

This audit focused on whether Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada processed applications for permanent residence efficiently and promptly to support Canada’s economic, family reunification, and humanitarian goals.

1

OAG Recommendation: To provide applicants with clear expectations of likely timelines for a decision, Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada should establish realistic service standards for processing of permanent resident applications. Information on expected processing times should be provided for all permanent resident applications and consider the volume and age of applications already in its inventories.

Agreed. Plans for a comprehensive multi-year service standard review are underway, in accordance with requirements of the Government of Canada’s Policy on Service and Digital. This review will prioritize establishing service standards for services that currently have none. This includes permanent residence streams, such as the Federal and Regional Economic Immigration and Family Class programs, as well as Resettled Refugees. Completion of this first phase is expected by end of fiscal year 2024-2025.

Existing service standards will also be evaluated to ensure they are comprehensive, meaningful, and relevant.

Published processing times are historical, meaning they’re measured based on how long it took to process 80% of applications in the past six months. While the Department is currently publishing those backward looking processing times, new methodologies have been developed in order to calculate forward looking estimates of processing times. This will allow IRCC to provide clients with more accurate expected wait times; accounting for volume and inventory after clients have submitted their application.

Leading Sector:

Ops lead: OPPB and CEB

Input: IPG, RASO

Supporting Sector:

SPP - SIPP

2

OAG Recommendation: Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada should take immediate steps to identify and address differential wait times experienced by applicants across permanent residence programs. Further it should develop and implement a plan for the collection of race-based and ethno-cultural information from applicants directly to support the timely processing of all applications within annual admission targets set by its Immigration Level Plan.

Agreed. The Department endeavors to process all applications in a timely manner. Applications are assessed on a case by case basis. As a result, differences in wait times are unavoidable. In addition, new commitments to specific populations may displace the processing of applications submitted, and awaiting processing. However, the Department will monitor wait times and include an examination and analysis of any differential findings observed.

IRCC will develop and implement a pilot to begin testing ways of collecting race-based and ethno-cultural information from its applicants, on a voluntary and self-reported basis. The pilot would allow IRCC to test methodologies and gather insights about the best ways to collect, analyze and use race-based and ethno-cultural data in line with the Department’s Anti-Racism Strategy. The pilot would inform critical aspects of the approach in terms of data integrity, standards, ethics, analysis, and privacy safeguards. As this data would be voluntary and on a self-reported basis, IRCC will assess its sample size and determine whether any bias exists in the sample size. This will be crucial to determine how to use the information collected and is directly related to the need for IRCC to establish and find a robust methodology that allow for both representativeness and the ability to isolate specific factors that may influence processing. Only then can IRCC analyze the data and identify findings. Such findings will then be integrated into IRCC’s broader work on examining racism in its policies and programs.

The estimated timeline for launching of the collection of the data on a voluntary and self-reported basis will align with broader IRCC efforts on standardizing how it collects disaggregated data.

Leading Sector:

Part 1 (identify and address differential wait times)

Ops - OPPB  and IN

Input: IPG, RASO, LMB

Part 2 (collection of race-based and ethno-cultural info from applicants): SPP - RDB

Supporting Sector:

SPP - SIPP

3

OAG Recommendation: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada should examine backlogged applications to determine whether there are unnecessary processing delays within its control, including waiting for officer actions or follow up. The Department should also prioritize the finalization of older backlogged applications, in working to achieve the annual admission targets set by the Immigration Levels Plan.

Agreed. The Department determines the number of admissions for the year within each immigration category and establishes priorities among economic, social, and humanitarian objectives with the annual Immigration Levels Plan. The Department receives more applications within many categories than can be processed based on the Immigration Levels plan. Intake controls exist for permanent resident lines of business where applications are submitted via the Express Entry system, however, they do not exist in most other permanent resident programs, which has led to the formation of backlogs.

The Department will continue to process applications (while respecting Levels space) to address the backlogs where they exist in permanent resident programs. The Department will also work on an implementation plan for the new authorities received to control intake within the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program. A Department-wide approach across permanent resident programs will better enable the Department to prevent and reduce backlogs at the program level. Where regional backlogs exist, the Department will continue to improve upon its existing workload monitoring and workload sharing tools to identify files that can be shifted to other offices and/or ensure that supplementary resources are allocated.

Leading Sector:

Ops - OPPB

Supporting Sector:

SPP - SPPB

4

OAG Recommendation: To improve consistency of application processing times across its offices, IRCC should match assigned workloads with required resources, and it should support these decisions with reliable information on the available capacity within its offices. It should take immediate action to address applications backlogs that have accumulated in certain offices with limited capacity.

Agreed. The Department will review and work to improve its workload monitoring and workload sharing tools to permit the Department to better identify where capacity challenges exist and continue to manage workloads and reduce backlogs where possible (where Levels space allows).  

The Department began shifting from paper-based processing and accelerated digital processing during COVID-19 Pandemic. This approach enabled IRCC to reallocate certain Economic Class and temporary resident workloads to align with available capacity. Shifting capacity around the processing network is possible in many areas and allows offices to focus on caseloads whereby place-based expertise is required. Most refugee and many family class applications require in-person interviews and an advanced understanding of the local conditions, customs, and regulations, and therefore, require additional resources to be in place. As of August 2023, 21 of 28 newly created decision-maker positions in Sub-Saharan Africa have already been staffed.

The Department augments in office capacity with Temporary Duty Assignments and work-sharing with other offices. Additionally, the Department implemented a new team with resettlement expertise to provide surge capacity and supplementary processing support to missions with aging inventories, allowing for a responsive approach to shifting inventories in 2022.  

While these efforts were insufficient in 2022, the above solutions have been successfully leveraged at a higher rate in 2023 and will be expanded in 2024 to further reduce regional backlogs and disparity in regional processing times for refugees by the end of 2024.

Due to regional complexities (client mobility rights, security conditions, exit permissions, etc.) and/or prioritization of cohorts in response to emerging crises, there will always be some level of variance between application processing times in a resettlement context despite these efforts.

Leading Sector:

Ops - OPPB

Input: All Networks

Supporting Sector:

FSA – FPB

5

OAG Recommendation: To support timely processing for all applicants, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada should examine differential outcomes in processing times related to the implementation of automated decision-making tools and reduce these disparities to the extent possible, including by reallocating sufficient resources to applications directed to manual processing.

Agreed. The Department commits to monitor and evaluate the effects of automated decision-making on overall processing times for clients selected for automated and manual processing, however, full alignment is not expected nor possible given that non-automated cases tend to be more complex and require additional efforts to process for various reasons (for example, additional documents from applicants, checks with partners, etc.).

The implementation of automated decision-making tools for application triage and eligibility assessment has led to efficiencies in both of these processing steps, regardless of the country of origin. Based on these efficiencies, the Department will reallocate resources to areas where additional capacity is required once further analysis has been conducted, as the efficiency gains are still relatively new.

It is also important to note that country-specific conditions and external factors beyond the Department’s control will continue to have an impact at the eligibility and admissibility stages of applications (noting that automated decision-making tools are not being applied at the admissibility stage). As the Department’s automated decision-making capacity matures, new measures will be established to support normalization within lines of business through new capacity allocation models; the aim being to ensure that processing times align with established service standards for each line of business regardless of how an application was triaged and processed by an automated decision-making tool.

Leading Sector:

Ops - OPPB w/ IN, CN, DN

Input: Ops DPM

Supporting Sector:

SPP – PRE, SPPB, SIPP, STMB

FSA – FPB

DSSI – SSI

6

OAG Recommendation: IRCC should prioritize online application portals for its refugee programs as it works towards completion of its Digital Platform Modernization Initiative.

Agreed. The Department is on track to add the Privately Sponsored Refugee category and non-United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) referred Government Assisted Refugee intake to its Permanent Resident Online portal in October and November 2023 respectively. In 2022, UNHCR referred applications under the Government Assisted Refugee category were being submitted electronically to the Department through an encrypted SharePoint submission which protects the personal information of clients. 

Leading Sector:

Ops - RASO

Input: IPG, IN, CEB

Supporting Sector:

SPP – PRE, RPB

FSA – FSB

DSSI – SSI