Feds reviewing inland refugee system, under pressure to scrap ‘safe countries’ list

2016/08/25 Leave a comment

Another issue to watch in terms of how the Liberal government finds a balance between maintaining the integrity of refugee determination and rights of refugee claimants:

The Liberal government is re-evaluating the way it treats refugee claimants who ask for protection after arriving in Canada, but won’t say whether it will scrap some of the widely criticized restrictions on some refugee claimants brought in by the previous government.

Government officials met with refugee advocacy groups and researchers July 14 to gather suggestions on what to do with Canada’s asylum system, which is used to process applications for refugee status by people who have already arrived in the country. People brought in from refugee camps abroad are processed in a different way. In 2014-15, the tribunal that decides on refugee claims in Canada was referred 13,500 claims, and the next year that creeped up to 16,500.

The government’s controversial Designated Countries of Origin (DCO) list was one of the key topics of the July 14 meeting, said Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees.

The DCO or “safe countries” list was created by the previous Conservative government, and includes countries that, according to the government, do not usually produce legitimate refugees. The list—which currently includes 42 countries—was designed to “ensure that people in need get protection fast, while those with unfounded claims are sent home quickly through expedited processing,” says the Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada website.

However, an internal IRCC audit released this summer found that DCO claims had not been processed faster than those from other countries, leading NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, B.C.) to question what the point of the system was.

The Liberals promised during the election campaign to set up an “expert human rights panel” to determine which countries should fall on the DCO list. Since the Liberals came to power, the government has said little about how it will fulfill this promise, and IRCC and the office of Immigration Minister John McCallum (Markham-Thornhill, Ont.) declined to provide details when asked.

The promise of an expert panel wasn’t good enough to satisfy critics of the DCO list, such as the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL) or Canadian Council for Refugees. CARL wrote in a brief submitted to the government in July that a human rights panel “cannot cure what is, at root, a discriminatory regime, introduced into the legislation for discriminatory purposes,” a sentiment Ms. Dench said was echoed by many in the July 14 consultation.

“There was a very clear message to the government from everybody that the designated-country-of-origin policy was not useful, was not credible, was not serving any purpose and was contrary to the [Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms],” she said.

 Critics say the DCO system kneecaps claimants from listed countries because they’re rushed through the process. They also say so-called safe countries may in fact be quite dangerous, at least to some persecuted groups or in some areas.

When asked a series of questions about the DCO system and the establishment of the expert panel, IRCC spokesperson Remi Lariviere wrote in an emailed statement that the government was considering how to make Canada’s asylum system “more fair and timely,” in part as a response to this summer’s consultations on the immigration system and to the IRCC internal audit, which identified several concerns with the system’s fairness and efficiency.

The Liberal party had also promised on the campaign trail to provide a right for claimants from DCO countries to appeal decisions by the Immigration and Refugee Board, an arm’s-length tribunal, a right they had been denied under the system set up by the Conservatives. The Liberal government has already fulfilled that promise by dropping a legal challenge initiated under the previous government to a Federal Court ruling last year, which held that the ban on appeals by DCO claimants was unconstitutional.

Department finds ‘need to reform’ system

The previous Conservative government overhauled the inland refugee system in 2012, after a rising number of refugee claims, few of which were accepted and many of which stemmed from countries the government of the day perceived to be generally safe, such as Mexico and Hungary. Canada had also recently seen two ships arrive on its shores with dozens of migrants from Sri Lanka who claimed asylum.

The IRCC conducted an audit of its asylum system at the instruction of the Treasury Board, which had committed to a review of the program three years after major reforms by the Conservative government. The audit covered the period from December 2012 to December 2014. In addition to a number of positive findings about the way the asylum system was operating, it identified a series of shortcomings in Canada’s asylum system, including that DCO claimants were not processed faster than non-DCO claimants.

The audit also found “a need to reform the in-Canada asylum system due to the increasing number of claims, growing backlogs/inventories, and lengthy processing times,” and that “failed claimants are not being removed in a timely manner.”

Source: The Hill Times

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Canada’s immigration detention program to get $138M makeover

2016/08/17

Another shift compared to the previous government:

The Canadian government is committing millions to upgrade immigration detention centres across Canada.

Immigration detention facilities in Vancouver and Laval, Que., are also set to be replaced.

Canada’s Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale made the $138-million announcement Monday morning at the Laval Immigration Holding Centre. He said the objective is to make detention a last resort.

“In my first few months as minister responsible for Canada Border Services Agency, I have certainly heard the concerns about immigration detention, and I’ve studied those concerns with great care,” Goodale said.

“The government is anxious to address the weaknesses that exist and to do better.”

Samer Muscati, the director of the University of Toronto’s International Human Rights Program, said it was reassuring to hear Goodale address concerns about excessive use of detention in his remarks today.

“He’s saying the right things and it’s a positive development that he’s saying these things, but of course we’ll need to see what happens in terms of actions that follow,” he said. “The proof will be in the pudding.”

The government will soon begin consultations with stakeholders with the aim of finding alternatives and ways to minimize the number of minors in detention.

According to the Canada Border Services Agency, there are, on average, 450 to 500 people who are detained at any given time under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

The End Immigration Detention Network says 15 people have died in detention while in CBSA custody since 2000. It says reforms are welcome, but the system is inherently unfair.

“Immigration detention including in immigration holding centres is imprisonment without charges or trial. It should end, not be expanded by throwing over a hundred million dollars at it,” said the Network’s spokesperson Tings Chak.

A Red Cross investigation in 2014 found numerous shortcomings at facilities for immigrant detainees, including overcrowding and inadequate mental health care.

Newcomers are often held in provincial jails or police facilities alongside suspected gang members and violent offenders.

The government’s reform objectives include:

  • Increasing the availability of alternatives to detention.
  • Reducing the use of provincial jails for immigration detention to prevent the interaction of immigration and criminal detainees.
  • Avoiding the detention of minors in the facilities as much as possible.
  • Improving physical and mental health care offered to those detained.
  • Maintaining ready access to facilities for agencies such as the Red Cross, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as well as legal and spiritual advisers.
  • Increasing transparency.

Source: Canada’s immigration detention program to get $138M makeover – Montreal – CBC News

A selection of more critical views, largely focusing on the need for oversight:

Migrants advocates welcome Ottawa’s reforms of the immigration detention system, but say the government is falling short on creating proper oversight of the agency responsible for the enforcement operations.

“It is encouraging the federal government is promising actions and reforms to the immigration detention system. Detention of immigrants needs to be absolutely the last resort and the government recognizes that,” said Josh Paterson of the British Colombia Civil Liberties Association.

“The thing is we need to put an end to housing migrants in criminal population. The money dedicated to the immigration infrastructure must not become the reason to detain more migrants and for longer period of time.”

….Anthony Navaneelan of the Canadian Association for Refugee Lawyers said what was missing in Goodale’s announcement was creating an independent oversight of the Canada Border Services Agency, which is responsible for enforcement of immigration laws including immigration detention.

“Building more detention beds is not enough. We need to keep people out of detention,” said Navaneelan.

 New Democrats immigration critic Jenny Kwan agreed.

“We need a complete and strong oversight to ensure these issues are addressed and the agency is accountable to the public. So many lives are in jeopardy,” said Kwan.

In July, more than 50 immigration detainees in Ontario held a hunger strike to protest prison conditions that include increasing lockdowns and the use of solitary confinement. They demanded to meet with Goodale — a request that was denied.

“We need an overhaul of the laws and policies governing detentions, including placing a limit of 90 days on detentions, not build new prisons,” said Tings Chak of the End Immigration Detention Network.

“Immigration detention is imprisonment without charges or trial. It should end, not be expanded by throwing over a hundred million dollars at it.”

Ontario Human Rights Commission chief commissioner Renu Mandhane said the federal government should be applauded for recognizing the need to provide adequate services to immigration detainees with mental health disabilities.

“We need to make detention more humane. Some detainees are caught in legal limbo for years,” Mandhane said. “They are faceless and hidden from the public, but their human rights should be respected.”

Conservative public security critic Erin O’Toole said there was no money in the federal budget earmarked for the immigration detention reforms and he felt the Liberal government was rushed to make the announcement without a plan.

“The devil is always in the details. This is a considerable amount of money,” said O’Toole. “A community supervision program has not been developed. Are we going to detain only the high-risk detainees? Are we going to stop using the provincial jails? These are the details I want before we decide if we need to build the new facilities.”

Immigration detention reforms fall short on oversight, critics say

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Getting Syrians here was easy. Now comes the hard part.

2016/08/12 Leave a comment

Good long read by Michael Friscolanti:

But as accurate as that may be, the Trudeau government has no firm statistics on how many Syrian refugees are actually earning a paycheque. This much is certain, though: to expect that every family will be self-sufficient after 12 months is wishful thinking.

“Some will do better than others,” says Carolyn Davis, executive director of Catholic Crosscultural Services, a settlement agency that also provides training courses for private sponsors. “Some will probably be independent and no longer requiring assistance before month 13, some will be independent by month 13, and some will not be independent by month 13. It would be very hard for me to put any numbers or proportions on that, but there will be people in every single one of those circumstances.”

That some government-assisted refugees end up on social assistance is hardly new. Departmental figures show that in 2009 (the latest stats available), 49 per cent of government-sponsored refugees who had arrived two years earlier were collecting welfare (compared to 19 per cent of privately sponsored refugees). Although most gradually wean off (50 per cent after the second year, 75 per cent by the fourth), a proportion stay dependent on welfare for the rest of the their lives.

“I think, as Canadians, we need to wrap our heads around that,” Douglas says. “These are refugees. These are not people who made a choice to come to Canada. These are folks who have been running for their lives, who have experienced things we can’t even begin to imagine, and as a country, we absolutely have to understand that we will always have refugees who will never be able to work.”

Indeed, it’s important to remember that government-assisted refugees are specifically flagged by the UNHCR because they are considered the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. They aren’t chosen because of job skills.

“In general, people are going to need to have a realistic viewpoint of the maximum you can expect,” Desloges says. “There is so much hopefulness and joy around the program right now, which is wonderful, but not everyone is going to succeed. You’re going to have some superstars who are going to grab this opportunity with two hands and become something wonderful, but we have to be realistic in our expectation. Just be grateful that we were able to save some lives.”

In the meantime, though, cities are bracing for month 13, well aware that a significant number of Syrians will soon transfer from federal to provincial assistance, at least temporarily. “It’s a big challenge, there is no way around it,” says Qaqish, the city councillor in Ottawa, which has welcomed more than 1,500 Syrians. “The province pays for social assistance but the municipalities administer it. We’ve asked the feds if they are open to the idea of extending federal assistance, maybe for another six months.”

Like others, Qaqish worries that some refugees will no longer be able to afford their rent because many landlords initially lowered prices in a show of solidarity with the Syrian program. Some stakeholders also fear the optics: a refugee collecting a welfare cheque is hardly the stuff of photo-ops.

“One refugee that fails resettlement is not acceptable, because it means we as a society failed to make sure those people integrated,” says Rabea Allos, director of the Catholic Refugee Sponsors Council, an umbrella organization for private sponsorship groups. “You don’t want, a year or two down the road, for Canadians to become upset with the refugee program and believe that some people are abusing the system. They will say: ‘You know what? Let’s stop getting refugees in.’ This is the concern. We want the program to work so Canadians will continue this compassion toward bringing more refugees.”

Source: Getting Syrians here was easy. Now comes the hard part. – Macleans.ca

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Christian leaders from Middle East ask for Canada’s help

2016/08/05 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see if this is picked up more widely:

A trio of Christian leaders from the Middle East are calling on Canada’s government to provide direct aid to Christians being persecuted in that region.

The three church leaders — one from war-torn Syria, one from Iraq and one from Lebanon — were in Toronto Wednesday as part of the Knights of Columbus’ annual Supreme Convention gathering.

All three spoke of the persecution of Christians in Middle Eastern hotspots by radical Muslim groups, such as the Islamic State (ISIS).

Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil, Iraq, says Canada — like the U.S. — has a “moral responsibility” to help.

“The Canadian people have a long tradition of helping and supporting the persecuted and marginalized people around the world,” said Warda, using Canada’s 1994 peacekeeping mission in Rwanda — albeit a doomed one — as an example. “Canadians were there. We’re not asking some extra efforts here. It is just the commitment of the Canadian people and the Canadian nation, that they would be always defending the marginalized and the (victimized) around the world. Here, there is a clear case … there are people being persecuted because of their faith, because of their way of life.”

The problem, says Warda, is that Canada’s government does not deal with church-affiliated organizations directly, but funnels aid money through various “institutions.”

“How much of this … (has reached) the Christian … refugees? … It is a very small amount,” he said.

Source: Christian leaders from Middle East ask for Canada’s help | Canada | News | Toron

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Yazidi genocide moves onto McCallum’s plate

2016/07/28 Leave a comment

To watch:

The whirlwind parliamentary study of the plight of Yazidis and other vulnerable groups has finished, and the witnesses and committee members are looking to Immigration Minister John McCallum to make the next move.

The emotional and often partisan study by the House Immigration Committee included calls from survivors of the Yazidi genocide, community advocates, and opposition MPs for the government to take special action to help persecuted Yazidis—a minority religious group targeted for genocide by ISIL (also known as ISIS, Daesh, and Islamic State)—in Iraq and the surrounding territories.

The Liberal-majority Immigration Committee asked Mr. McCallum (Markham-Thornhill, Ont.) to “accelerate” asylum applications by Yazidis fleeing the violence, and to “create and implement special measures to facilitate Canada’s response” in a letter sent through Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre, Ont.), the committee chair.

“We’re asking the government to use existing tools that are available in order to fulfill what the United Nations has called for” for the Yazidi population, said Liberal MP Peter Fragiskatos (London North Centre, Ont.), who temporarily replaced Liberal MP Shaun Chen (Scarborough North, Ont.) on the committee during the study.

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel (Calgary Nose Hill, Alta.), a committee member and her party’s immigration critic, sent her own letter to Mr. McCallum calling for the government to once again exempt Syrian and Iraqi refugees from an annual cap on privately-sponsored refugees coming into Canada, and to examine using a special section of the federal Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to bring asylum-seekers to Canada quicker.

NDP MP Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, B.C.), a committee member and her party’s immigration critic, sent her own letter to Mr. McCallum. Both Ms. Kwan and Ms. Rempel called on the minister to use that special provision in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, section 25, to immediately resettle vulnerable people to Canada, and to begin tracking refugees by ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation, so as to show how successful the government is at bringing in those under the greatest threat.

Mr. McCallum declined to be interviewed on the subject through spokesperson Félix Corriveau, who wrote in an emailed statement that “the minister’s schedule will not allow him to answer your questions.”

The committee will issue a formal report to the minister once Parliament resumes in the fall.

UN refugee agency, UN convention under fire

The Liberal government faces numerous obstacles to the type of quick, large-scale action urged by the committee members and advocates for persecuted minority groups in the Middle East, South Sudan, Myanmar, and elsewhere.

For one, it has already run up a significant bill during a deficit year for its ongoing admission and resettlement of 25,000 government-assisted Syrian refugees, and has committed nearly $1 billion to support those refugees over six years.

Mr. McCallum told Bloomberg last week that his government was having trouble bringing in refugees fast enough to meet the demand of Canadians who wish to privately sponsor their resettlement. However, there was concern among the leaders of some of Canada’s largest cities that they would not have the resources to deal with the large influx of Syrian refugees as the government hit the stride of its mass resettlement effort earlier this year.

The government faces a more technical barrier to the resettlement of Yazidis and other persecuted groups. Many of those people are living in camps or other places of temporary refuge within the borders of their home country. Under the wording of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, upon which Canadian law is based, those people are not considered to be refugees as they have not left their country.

Canada currently relies upon the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN’s refugee agency, to help it select refugees for resettlement, and that agency does not have the mandate to deal with internally displaced people, David Manicom, the associate assistant deputy minister for Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, told the committee.

Canada and the international community should look at reopening the UN Refugee Convention to address that issue, said Mr. Fragiskatos.

However, Mr. Manicom said doing so would be too risky, as some signatories to the convention wish to narrow, not expand, their responsibility to refugees under that convention.

To bring in internally displaced people from hard-to-reach areas, the government may have to follow in the footsteps of Germany, which resettled more than a 1,000 persecuted Yazidis following the ISIL attack in 2014 by working with third-party humanitarian groups instead, Mr. Manicom said.

Government officials are planning a fact-finding mission to Erbil in northern Iraq for the fall, he said.

Source: The Hill Times

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Do more to help Yazidis, say Tories as audit of 546 refugees shows they only let in 3

2016/07/20 Leave a comment

Hard to believe, given all the previous and current rhetoric of the Conservatives. Kind of undermines their case even though I am sympathetic to giving priority to communities at greater risk, including the Yazidis:

As the Conservatives push for more help for Yazidis fleeing persecution at the hands of Islamic militants, new information suggests their efforts to do so while in government were minimal.

Data from a controversial audit of Syrian refugee cases ordered by former prime minister Stephen Harper late last spring reveals of 546 people reviewed, three identified as Yazidi, a Kurdish minority group which practices an ancient faith.

Immigration officials also told a House of Commons committee Monday that Yazidis were never highlighted specifically by the Conservatives as a group that should be prioritized for resettlement, even with their targeted approach to resettlement.

The data and the testimony Monday give both the Liberal and the Conservative arguments over Canada’s refugee policy some new energy after the file was a political flashpoint for most of 2015.

The Conservatives’ areas-of-focus policy drew heavy criticism, with many arguing it flew in the face of international obligations that see the UN choose who is resettled. The Tories argued that they were using the UN criteria, but were drilling down within them to ensure the most vulnerable were helped.

The Tories put religious minorities in that category, but the data obtained by The Canadian Press under access-to-information laws suggest the vast majority of landed Syrians whose files were audited were Sunni Muslim, as is the refugee population at large. About three dozen were Christian.

That few Yazidis arrived under their watch is a fact the Tories haven’t dwelled on as they have been pushing the Liberals for more action.

UN ignores ethnicity when prioritizing refugees

Since 2014, the Yazidis have been subject to forced conversions, murder, rape and enslavement at the hands of Islamic militants — actions recently declared a genocide by the UN.

The Tories now say that declaration should put them at the front of the line for resettlement to Canada.

There are, however, numerous policy roadblocks, especially the fact that most are in their home country of Iraq and as such aren’t eligible for resettlement.

Another challenge is that while a person’s faith or ethnicity might be the reason he or she became a refugee, it’s not something the UN looks at when selecting people for resettlement. In fact, the UN expressly asks states not to prioritize groups that way because the most important criteria must be vulnerability.

The Liberals repeatedly asked Immigration Department officials Monday about the policies of the previous government. While in opposition, they had argued that selecting refugees on the basis of religion — as the Tories were believed to be doing — was wrong. The Liberals have resisted calls to do so with the Yazidis.

But the Tories never gave specific instructions to track Yazidis, the officials said.

What about the Tories’ “areas of focus,” the officials were asked. Were Yazidis placed on that?

“There was no specific group put on the list,” Robert Orr, assistant deputy minister, said.

Source: Do more to help Yazidis, say Tories as audit of 546 refugees shows they only let in 3 – Politics – CBC News

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Time to change refugee law, says immigration committee chair

2016/07/14 Leave a comment

To note:

Canada’s refugee system is failing persecuted peoples around the world who can’t flee their own country, say members of the House Immigration Committee.

The committee agreed unanimously to hold a series of meetings over the summer to study the protection of vulnerable groups, and much of the discussion will likely revolve around internally displaced persons (IDPs)—those who are persecuted and driven from their homes, but aren’t able to reach refugee camps outside of their country’s borders, and thus are not legal refugees.

“Everything [in Canada] is structured around refugees: the regulatory, the legal framework. And it doesn’t allow us to address the issue of IDPs,” said Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre, Ont.), the committee chair.

The committee hopes to have a report ready by September, complete with suggestions for legal, regulatory, or policy changes that could make it easier to bring vulnerable internally displaced people, including Iraqi Yazidis, to Canada, said Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, adding he hoped the report “could be used as a framework for our government to act on this humanitarian crisis.”

The committee was inspired to act after the United Nations released its report last month on the persecution of the Yazidi people in northern Iraq by ISIL (also known as ISIS, Daesh, and the Islamic State), say the committee chair and vice-chairs.

A pair of Yazidi women are among the witnesses scheduled to speak before the committee, as are representatives of the UN Human Rights Commission, office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and government officials. The committee also invited electronic submissions from the public up until July 13.

Source: The Hill Times

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Welcome to the country: Refugees are helping a prairie town grow

2016/07/11 Leave a comment

Good long read by Erin Anderssen on the welcome and support given to Syrian and other refugees in Altona, Manitoba, a community originally settled by Mennonite refugees.

Source: Welcome to the country: Refugees are helping a prairie town grow – The Globe and Mail

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Arabic, English language exchange creates community connections

2016/07/05 Leave a comment

Good small initiative bringing people together:

“With the influx of Syrian refugees and the outpouring of public desire to help, I thought it was a right time to try and start a language exchange program focussing on Arabic and English. So I started networking.”

She got a $2,500 grant from UBC’s Global Responses to the Refugee Crisis for rental costs and language materials. She found a meeting space at the Ajyal Islamic Centre in downtown Vancouver. She put the word out for participants. Twenty women signed up for the course — 10 English-speaking Canadians and 10 Arabic speakers. The participants were then divided into pairs — one English speaker to one Arabic speaker — and were told they would be responsible for each other’s instruction. Over the course’s 10-week term, each session would be divided in half between English speakers helping the Arabic speakers learn English, and then the Arabic speakers helping the English speakers learn Arabic.

For the English speakers, who knew little or no Arabic, it was tough going. But what they did find instructive were the Arabic-speaking women themselves. They hailed from Eqypt, Kuwait, Libya, Iraq and Syria. They confounded stereotype. Several were professionals. Several were refugees. Hazar AlSibaai, a civil engineer, and her 16-year-old daughter, Sana AlAyoubi, were Syrians who had spent three years in a Jordanian refugee camp before coming to Canada. Michelle Kaczmarek, a Masters student in library and information studies at UBC, was partnered with Hazar, and Shalene Takara, a clinical counsellor, partnered Sana.

“I found them very friendly and incredibly joyous,” said Kaczmarek, “and the group very diverse as well. It was important to recognize that diversity in this massive Arabic-speaking world.”

“In every class we did,” Takara said, “we focussed on a theme. One of them, for example, was about food, and Hazar and I talked about what we cooked, where we shopped, where we came from … everyday things. It was quite playful and fun, and we joked a lot, and that part was unexpected for me. I think how much we shared beyond the language exchange came as a surprise.”

Hazar, whose English is halting, said she wanted to improve her English so she might go back to school and eventually find work as an engineer here. But that, she said, would be difficult. Sana, who took English in school in Syria, spoke much more fluently, and attends high school here now. (At one point, she brought in her physics homework so Kaczmarek could help her with it.) She took the class, she said, not only to improve her English but “to engage the community here.” She hopes to go on to university and become a pharmacologist.

But life here was very different from what she knew, she said. “It’s very difficult. I need time. It’s not just about the language; it’s everything that’s different.”

Not too much can be made of 10 weeks of language lessons, of course. A feel-good story is one thing, but it doesn’t make it any easier for Hazar to find work or Sana to pass her exams. It doesn’t guarantee what little Arabic they learned would stay with Kaczmarek or Takara, or that lasting relationships would blossom between any of the 20 women. It won’t stop wars, or doors from closing.

On the other hand, they were 20 women who, despite the cultural gulf, enjoyed each other’s company. And at the end of the last session, everyone stayed late after class, sat down to a meal and broke bread together.

Source: Arabic, English language exchange creates community connections | Vancouver Sun

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Refugee system reform at risk as asylum numbers keep climbing: report

2016/06/29 Leave a comment

Like any such major changes, takes time to assess the results. Overall, a fairly positive evaluation is my take, with recommendations more in the nature of incremental improvements (Evaluation of the In-Canada Asylum System Reforms).

But there appears to be little explanation for the reasons of the increase, only discussion of the possible effects of the increase:

Changes made to Canada’s refugee system in 2012 resulted in faster decisions on asylum claims, but an internal government study warns those improvements may now be at risk.

Several asylum targets weren’t met following the implementation of reforms, despite the fact the government had set aside money to cover twice as many claims as were ultimately received, the study found.

Now, the number of claims is on the rise again.

“If claim intake continues to increase, there is a risk that there may be further challenges meeting targets, that backlogs may grow, and the overall average claimant time in the system may increase,” said an internal evaluation of the reforms posted online by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

The latest evaluation comes with Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government poised to put additional pressure on the system by undoing another of the changes made by the previous Conservative government.

The primary goal of the changes had been to get claims decided faster, to ensure those in need of asylum were approved more quickly, and those who did not qualify were promptly deported.

The evaluation examined the implementation of two laws that — among other things — created timelines for certain steps in the process and limited avenues of appeal for claimants from certain countries.

Prior to that, however, the Tories also sought to cut off claims at the source by imposing visa restrictions on countries whose nationals were to blame much of the backlog.

One of those countries was Mexico: about 9,000 of 36,759 claims lodged in 2008 came from Mexicans. After visas were imposed in 2009, the number of Mexican claims fell to 1,199.

But this week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and announce a plan to lift that visa requirement.

It will come despite objections from departmental officials who fear a new spike in claims and a precedent being set with regards to visas in place on other countries.

The evaluation doesn’t explicitly address the implications of a Mexican visa lift on the system. It was carried out prior to the Liberals winning the election.

But in general, it found, claims are already rising.

The year the reforms were introduced, 20,456 claims were lodged. In 2013, it was only 10,322. In 2014, 13,410 claims were filed, in 2015 over 16,000 and further increases are forecast in the next two years, the evaluation said.

The $259 million spent on the reform project means those seeking asylum now receive a decision on their file about five times faster than those who applied prior to 2012.

Despite that, targets for hearing dates and removals continue to be missed. Among them — the goal of getting 80 per cent of failed claimants out within 12 months of the decision. Just over half were actually removed.

In a formal response to the evaluation, both Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency said they were working to plug the gaps.

“Successful delivery of a decentralized asylum system requires close co-operation between independent organizations, while remaining mindful that each organization is independent in delivering on specific decision-making targets,” the government wrote in its response.

“Despite efforts to ensure the smooth management of the asylum system, there are factors that are beyond the control of IRCC and other organizations, such as unpredictable intake and challenges in obtaining travel documents from recalcitrant countries.”

Source: Refugee system reform at risk as asylum numbers keep climbing: report – The Globe and Mail

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