With more than 2.4M immigration applications in Canada’s backlog, many here and overseas feel lost – Excerpt Need for race-based data

Not convinced by the additional value of obtaining race-based data given that country of citizenship provides enough information in most cases to assess trends and impacts.

It would, of course, be interesting, particularly with USA and European immigrants, given that many of those may be visible minorities.

The practicality of how it would be collected (visible minority definitions, ethnic ancestry or other?) is another is another issue. More tick boxes on an already long form and process?

A higher priority, IMO, is to have regularly monthly updates on backlogs, broken down by citizenship (IRCC used to provide updates on “inventory” but this stopped with the shift to monthly data):

Many applicants raised concerns about IRCC taking longer to process their applications based on their country of citizenship.

CBC News obtained data from IRCC breaking down more than 2.4 million applications by country of citizenship.

Of more than two million temporary and permanent residence applications, nearly a million came from India.

“In the case of India, country-specific restrictions during the pandemic made it harder for individuals to submit documents, obtain medical appointments, provide us with their biometrics and for us to finalize applications,” IRCC said.

Source: With more than 2.4M immigration applications in Canada’s backlog, many here and overseas feel lost