Thought you might be interested in this. Quarterly stats (at the bottom) are interesting.
Here is some information from the local IRB meeting in Montreal, 23 April 2013:
Question: If a claimant submits the BOC a day or so late, what happens at the "special hearing"? What should the claimant expect?
Answer: The RPD will decide whether to declare the claim abandoned based on principles of natural justice. The claimant should explain the reasons for the delay. Arguments should be related to natural justice. If possible the claimant should give notice to the RPD before the BOC deadline to explain that the BOC is coming (or better still ask for an extension).
Question: Are the security checks mostly being received in time for scheduled hearings? What happens if they are not done by the hearing date?
Answer: If the security checks are not completed 5 days before the hearing, the hearing is postponed (indefinitely). Currently this is an issue in only a minority of cases. The hearing will be rescheduled after the security check is completed. If the security check is not completed after 6 months, a hearing will be scheduled but CIC can still argue that it should be delayed further. See revised CIC guidelines on this matter. RAD (Montreal). They have had 6 appeals decided, all rejected for lack of jurisdiction. New RPD: At full capacity, members will be expected to hear 5 cases a week. There is a centralized process for change of date. Where there is a conflict, a new case will bump a backlog ("legacy") case. There is itinerant service offered in St John's, Halifax, Fredericton, Winnipeg, Regina and Edmonton. Claimants get a first notice with no specific location - there is a phone number to call to get the location. Also they get a second notice with the exact location.
Statistics
15 December 2012 -
31 March 2013
Claims referred to RPD: 558 total 60 DCO claims 498 non-DCO POE 273 Inland 285
Top 10 countries Haiti - 72 Colombia - 52 Croatia - 31 DRC - 29 Algeria - 25 Burundi - 25 Syria - 24 Rwanda - 16 Hungary - 15 India - 14
Raj Sharma JD LLM
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