Refugee board to triage claims to reduce backlog

New process could boost decision-makers’ productivity by 15 to 20 per cent, IRB says

The Immigration and Refugee Board will begin to triage and refer old and new claims for shorter hearings in March, in an attempt to reduce its ballooning backlog, or at least to stop it from snowballing.

Through flexible scheduling and shorter hearing streaming, the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) hopes to increase the productivity of its119 decision-makers by15 to 20 per cent, said Paula Thompson, the board’s chief of staff.

The redeployment, announced earlier in February, came on the heels of U.S. President Donald Trump’s antirefugee policies and Canada’s lifting of the visa requirements for Mexican travellers in December. However, Thompson said the board’s move was not prompted by these events.

“There’s no direct relationship with what’s going on in the (United) States,” Thompson told the Star. “So far we have seen a very negligible increase from Mexico. It’s not a huge player right now. The last couple of months, we received 75 Mexican claims each month.”

Data showed the IRB received an average of 1,700 new claims a month from January to August last year, but the number has skyrocketed to 2,400 cases since. Currently, there are 19,000 claims in the backlog.

Although asylum claims must be heard within 60 days under the reforms made by the previous Conservative government in 2012, Thompson said exceptions granted in the law, as well as cases returned to the board by the refugee appeal tribunal and the federal court, have contributed to the backlog.

On top of that, delays in security clearances by Canada Border Services Agency have caused hearings to be postponed and rescheduled. At least one in 10 cases are being delayed for this reason alone, Thompson noted. While the postponed cases don’t go to the end of the queue, priorities are given to new arriving claims.

Under the new triage approach, claims will be screened for short hearings if the cases are straightforward and have no issues with the identity and credibility of the claimants. Currently, an average refugee hearing lasts about three hours.

The IRB is still considering the details of the triage operation and one of the options is to refer claims from countries with 80 per cent or higher acceptance rate to short hearings. Claimants from 18 countries currently would meet that criteria, Thompson said, though other factors would be considered.

“There’s always ways to improve, but if the backlog keeps going up, it does tell a story,” PAULA THOMPSON IRB CHIEF OF STAFF

In the past year, the IRB has added more than 29 new adjudicators to the refugee tribunal and assigned the decision-makers to cases by countries with their hope their expertise in the political and human rights conditions in these regions can make them more efficient. Half the 119 refugee judges will be assigned to deal with claims in the backlog.

“I don’t think the processing time of the new cases will be compromised. I expect we will still be able to hear the new claims within four months,” Thompson said.

“But diverting up to 50 per cent of our decision-making power to hear backlog will have an impact on the number of new claims we are processing. That is certain,” she said.

The IRB currently has a separate expedited program for claims from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Ethiopia through paper reviews of their cases. The processing time averages at two months, with an acceptance rate between 80 and 95 per cent.

“There’s always ways to improve, but if the backlog keeps going up, it does tell a story,” Thompson said.