It appears that the work done by the Immigration and Refugee Board, particularly the Refugee Protection Division, is of little value or importance to the Conservative Government. I make this (logical) conclusion based on the fact that there has been a reversal of years of winnowing down a seemingly insurmountable refugee backlog. Number of outstanding claims has increased by 50% in the last two years; there are now over 30,000 refugee cases pending determination. The main reason for the increase in backlog is the Conservative’s refusal to appoint more decision makers to the RPD now suffering from a loss of over 45 decision makers.
It could be however, that the neglect of the Board is simply a symptom of a broader neglect of immigration policy in Canada. Despite the insistence of both the Liberal and Conservative governments as to the importance of the immigration portfolio, one only needs to note the revolving door of the ministry – resulting in 4 different Ministers of CIC since December 2003. I wonder if any Minister has had the time to get a handle on the numerous complex issues involved.
Essentially the Board must make more decisions, with far less resources. In that vein, I can offer the following suggestions to tackle the backlog:
- Appoint more Board Members (alternatively, at least replace them.) You really can’t make determinations, without decision makers. This is fairly self-explanatory.
- Get to the easy yes, or easy no, faster. There are countries, such as Burma and Colombia that have approval rates over 75%. A refugee claim from such a country should be expedited (indeed, provisions in the RPD Rules allow such a ‘decision’ to be made by an immigration officer). As a result, these ‘quick yeses’ will result in resources being more efficiently used elsewhere. Also, there are countries for which refusal rates are quite low (less than 15% or so). Claims from these countries should also be expedited (but done in a fair manner). Strangely enough, I’ve seen claims from the US(a very nice, mentally disturbed lady who feared all ‘black people’ in the US, but nonetheless took up valuable Board resources in determining her claim), France and other developed and ‘safe’ countries (see below).
- Learn from other countries. The UKhas a list of safe countries from which asylum claims which are refused and certified as clearly unfounded will be determined quickly, and cannot be appealed before removal. The following countries are currently designated as generally safe under the Nationality and Immigration Act 2002: Albania, Bulgaria, Jamaica, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania Serbia & Montenegro, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, India, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Ukraine. Home Office Minister Browne, in discussing adding India to the safe country list stated: “Introducing a safe country list has resulted in a significant cut in the number of asylum applicants from these countries and this is just one of a number of steps we are taking to tackle abuse of the system … India, however is generally a safe country where people are not routinely fleeing for their lives, and very few people need our protection under the refugee convention. While we will of course continue to make all decisions on a case by case basis, it is only right that if an asylum seeker does not require our protection they should return home when it is safe to do so.”
While we should make all decisions on a ‘case by case basis’ we really need to adopt the UK’s attempts to address abuse of the refugee system. I would suggest that, claims from Mexico (which is Canada’s top source country for refugee claims), the US, Western European Countries, India and the other countries on the UK safe country list need to be assessed and perhaps adopted by Canada.
The alternative is to wait until our refugee system can no longer handle the pressures and we have a real problem on our hands – which will take far more time, money and resources to fix at that later time.
** Note - the above post was published in the Calgary Herald on October 16, 2007. Link here. It appears that for editorial reasons, 'Burma' was changed to 'Myanmar'. While the military junta refers to the country as Myanmar, UK Home Office documents as well as other country condition research documents (such as the US Department of State Report) refer to the country as Burma.
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