IRB strapped by backlog: documents

OTTAWA • The agency that processes refugee claims estimated it would need almost four times as much money as it is getting to tackle a major backlog in asylum claims, caused in part by an influx of irregular migrants.

Documents obtained under access-to-information law show the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) drafted estimates in November 2017 showing it would need $140 million a year, plus an additional $40 million in one-time costs, to process 36,000 extra refugee cases annually.

That’s the number of cases the board would need to complete to cut the backlog while also dealing with new asylum claims.

The government ultimately earmarked $74 million for the IRB, over two years, in last year’s federal budget to address Canada’s refugee backlog.

This amount will not go far enough, the IRB said in a “key messages” document circulated within the department.

“The additional funding will allow us to finalize at least 17,000 additional claims for refugee protection and a little more than 3,000 RAD (refugee appeal division) appeals,” the IRB says in the document dated May 24, 2018. “Certainly the current inventory of pending claims — a little over 50,000 — cannot all be finalized with the funding provided, and in a two-year window. To tackle an inventory of this size, while still meeting ongoing intake, requires a longerterm approach.”

The number of outstanding claims has since grown to over 64,000.

IRB has had an increase in the number of refugee claims since 2017, a phenomenon it attributes to “changes in the global environment.”

In the 2017-18 fiscal year, the number of new claims began exceeding the board’s capacity to process them by an average of about 2,300 cases a month.