CIMM – IRCC’s 2022-2023 Annual Reports on the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act – October 24, 2023
Key Facts and Figures
In 2022-2023, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) saw decreases in its compliance rates (i.e., the percentage of requests responded to within legislated timelines) as a result of a high volume of requests, antiquated technology, and ongoing challenges in attracting and retaining staff in a competitive environment.
Requests received
Requests closed
Compliance rate
ATIA
184,587
161,067
21.09%
PA
24,164
18,273
20.14%
In 2022-2023, IRCC reported seven material privacy breaches to the Treasury Board Secretariat and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and registered 7,397 non-material privacy breaches.
Key Messages
Although the reports show a decrease in compliance compared to the previous year (↓12.95% for Access to Information Act [ATIA] requests and ↓17.86% for Privacy Act [PA] requests), the Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) program has since implemented a number of improvements to increase compliance rates and client satisfaction, including:
Adding and prioritizing resources to process and review more requests within legislated timeframes.
Implementing a new robotic process automation (bot) to identify potentially abandoned requests in the backlog.
Expanding its Client Service team to respond to client enquiries in a more timely manner.
Results since the beginning of this fiscal year are promising:
33.65% increase in ATIA compliance
39.23% increase in PA compliance
18.47% reduction in ATIP backlog files (from 71,278 to 58,113)
71% reduction in complaints received from the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC).
Through improved transparency and communication with clients, we are addressing the root causes of the increase in access requests and complaints.
The Department has expanded its use of the Application Status Trackers to many high volume lines of business, including temporary residence (i.e. students, workers and visitors), Express Entry, citizenship grants and spousal sponsorship.
It has also improved client correspondence, launching a new temporary resident (TR) refusal letter last year, and recently completing a pilot project that involved the proactive release of officer decision notes to certain TR applicants, with promising early results.
The Department will continue to implement improvements, many of which are linked to our Digital Platform Modernization initiative. This will make it easier to share more information with clients and significantly reduce reliance on the access regime.
IRCC will continue to monitor these measures, develop additional measures to reduce its backlog, and dedicate additional resources as required to ensure improved statistics for its 2023-2024 annual reports.
In terms of privacy breaches, all privacy breaches are assessed, tracked and handled internally, with the vast majority of the breaches being assessed as “non-material.”
IRCC is committed to increasing privacy awareness for all of its employees. Continual reminders, training, and the sharing of best practices are fundamental to ensure that we promote a culture of protecting personal information.
Supplementary Information
In 2022-2023, IRCC received over 208,000 ATIP requests. This represents 78% of all Access to Information (ATI) requests and 23% of all Privacy requests submitted to federal government institutions. 99% of ATI requests received are for immigration client files.
During the 2022-2023 reporting period, the Department was notified of 4,300 complaints received by the OIC and 150 complaints received by the OPC. The majority of complaints were related to delays in processing.
In response, IRCC has allocated specific resources to the complaints process for both client and corporate requests.
