Canadian Immigration Minister Sean Fraser believes that significant steps are being taken to put the immigration system back on track.
Fraser acknowledged the ongoing challenges with processing applications and the customer experience when he spoke with CIC News for an exclusive interview in Toronto earlier this week.
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The minister expects things to be back to normal by the end of 2022
“The COVID-19 pandemic has hampered our immigration system in two main ways. It closed a lot of our offices around the world…we lost a lot of our power as a department.
The second way, he explained, was Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) needed to pivot towards transitioning people in Canada to permanent residency as travel restrictions limited the ability of people abroad to enter the country. This was happening as new apps kept coming in, causing inventory to pile up. Then, in August 2021, Canada pledged to resettle 40,000 Afghan refugees following the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan and, since February 2022, Canada has sought to assist those affected by the invasion of Afghanistan. Ukraine by Russia.
“The good news is that I see light at the end of the tunnel…we are currently on track to restore our pre-pandemic service standard by the end of this calendar year for virtually all areas of ‘activity.”
Minister Fraser added the caveat that the service standard for Canadian citizenship applications may continue to experience a bit of a backlog due to the significant increase in inventory at the start of the pandemic, when in-person citizenship ceremonies were not an option.
Fraser: Three Solutions to Improve Customer Experience and Address Backlogs
The minister believes that the three solutions to improving the immigration system are “resources, politics and technology”.
“On the resource side, we have added 500 additional employees. He also highlighted the additional $85 million and an additional $385 million allocated in recent federal budget announcements that will be used to improve application processing.
Meanwhile, Fraser believes that Canada will have to even higher levels of immigration to meet the growing demand for permanent residency in Canada.
“Policy number one is our Immigration Levels Plan. We are not going to reduce the number of cases in the inventory if we do not increase the numbers. »
In February, Fraser announced that Canada would welcome more than 430,000 immigrants each year starting this year, by far the highest levels in Canadian history. It is set to announce the 2023-2025 Immigration Levels Plan by November 1 this year, which could lead to a further increase in Canada’s targets.
Regarding the third solution, technology, the Minister said that “the modernization of the digital platform will significantly increase the reliability and rhythm of our system”.
“These measures are starting to have an impact…a few weeks ago we exceeded 200,000 permanent residents landed in Canada.” The minister noted that this broke the previous record of 1.5 months.
“Working license increased by almost 250% compared to last year. »
IRCC’s backlog soared to 2.4 million people during the pandemic and the department struggled to meet its own targets for processing times. Since the beginning of this year, it has made major announcements and changes with the aim of reducing the backlog, processing times and giving more certainty to its customers. In late January, Minister Fraser held a press conference summarizing IRCC’s processing goals, including steps it was taking to increase staff capacity and modernize its processes and technology.
One of the benefits has been the reduction in Express entry back. The minister said CIC News that Express Entry draws for all programs are tentatively set to resume on July 6. Additionally, IRCC aims to return to its pre-pandemic service standard of processing Express Entry applications within six months of July.
Another benefit is that IRCC has introduced and is introducing more case trackers to allow applicants to review the status of their cases. The minister says 17 business sectors will have case trackers by the end of the summer, allowing candidates to digitally monitor their status.
Although challenges remain, the minister said he was very optimistic about CIC News.
“My feeling is that by the end of this calendar year, new applications that come in will have the kind of certainty that we will be able to meet our service standard and people will be dealing with 60 days or 6 months or 12 months , not an indefinite term.
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Special Interview Series with Minister Fraser
CIC News met with the Minister on June 21, 2022 to discuss the future of Canadian immigration.
Over the next few weeks, CIC News publishes a special series of articles on the interview with Minister Fraser on topics such as:
Minister Fraser was in Toronto to speak at Collision, one of the largest technology conferences in the world.
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