Of note (endemic problem in terms of demand always exceeding allotment):
…In a statement, Taous Ait, a spokesperson for immigration minister Lena Metlege Diab said the measures are “part of broader efforts to restore balance across immigration programs and support timely processing, while maintaining public confidence in Canada’s immigration system.”
She said decisions to open or pause new intakes to the program follow assessments of the number of people in “its inventory and application inventory, each year.”
“IRCC will continue processing up to 15,000 individuals this year who have already applied, in line with our Immigration Levels Plan,” she added.
The Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP) is a lottery-like pathway to permanent residence for family members who are foreign nationals. Demand to settle here under the program has far outstripped the number of permanent residence spots available under the government’s immigration targets.
In the 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan, published in last year’s budget, the government cut its target for new permanent residents under the parents and grandparents program to 15,000 in each of the three years.
…Calgary immigration lawyer Yameena Ansari said the waits are so long for people wanting to bring their parents and grandparents to Canada some have died during the process.
She said there is a scramble to apply when windows to do so are opened as they were from July to October in 2025.
Ms. Ansari said the current system “is kind of like a lottery, but there’s hundreds of thousands of people in the pool.”
“Every two years or so they open the lottery and people have a limited amount of time to submit to the lottery and then they close it. The majority of time it’s closed.”
“I do think there should be a rethink,” she said, adding the government did not seem to want older people to come here from abroad because of the strain on the health care system. …
Will be interesting to see overall impact on hirings, separations and promotions by group in next year’s report:
The number of people applying for a job in the federal government plummeted last year as Ottawa works to slash the size of the public service.
Two years ago, there were more than a million applications for jobs in the federal public service.
But between April 1, 2025 and March 31, 2026, that number fell by nearly 30 per cent, to less than 735,000.
The number of job ads the government posted was also down almost 40 per cent, while the number of people who left the public service, including retirements and resignations, increased 12 per cent.
There were also around 52 per cent fewer promotions within the public service in 2025-26, compared to a year earlier.
In Budget 2025, the Liberal government committed to cutting the number of public service positions by about 40,000 people by April 2029 from a peak of almost 368,000 in 2024. …
Good discussion of the issues and evidence with sensible conclusion:
…None of this means that AI is inherently discriminatory, nor does it mean employers should abandon digital hiring technologies. Used responsibly, these tools can improve efficiency and help employers identify qualified candidates.
But Canada has spent decades refining how it selects skilled immigrants. Less attention is being paid to the technologies increasingly shaping whether those skills are recognized after arrival.
As AI becomes embedded in recruitment, we need to consider how opportunity is governed once immigrants enter the labour market. If immigration policy selects skilled immigrants, AI is increasingly shaping whether they are seen as skilled workers.
Canada’s future depends on both immigration and artificial intelligence. Ensuring that these two ambitions reinforce rather than undermine one another may become one of the defining policy challenges of the AI era.
Artificial intelligence is being used to bolster immigration and asylum cases in Canada by generating fake narratives, including references to fabricated court decisions.
Both the federal department, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), and the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), an independent tribunal that rules on asylum applications, say they have detected the use of AI in applications containing fake or inaccurate information.
The IRB said that the use of AI in applications to stay in Canada as a refugee is creating a fresh challenge for its employees.
“Recently, we have observed that memoranda of appeal are becoming lengthier, yet this increase in volume does not necessarily translate to stronger arguments. In fact, occasionally these documents include references to case law that do not exist or cite legal precedents for propositions they do not actually support,” the IRB in a statement. “This adds unnecessary complexity and time to our work.”…
Useful info to better understand the policy rationale:
The federal government is seeking the power to cancel applications for groups of visa holders at least in part due to concerns of fraud from India and Bangladesh, according to internal documents obtained by CBC News.
A departmental presentation to the immigration minister’s office said that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and unnamed U.S. partners are aiming to identify and cancel fraudulent visitor visa applications.
The Canadian entities and U.S. partners formed a working group looking to beef up authorities to refuse and cancel visas, according to the presentation, which singled out India and Bangladesh as “country-specific challenges.”
A section explaining how mass cancellation powers could be used listed hypothetical scenarios such as a pandemic, war and “country-specific visa holders.”
Publicly, Immigration Minister Lena Diab has listed a pandemic or war as why the government is seeking these powers, but has not mentioned country-specific visa holders.
The presentation provides a further glimpse into Ottawa’s motivation for gaining those mass cancellation powers.
More than 300 civil society groups have raised concerns over the legislation. Some, such as the Migrant Rights Network, say group cancellations would give the government the ability to set up a “mass deportation machine.”
Immigration lawyers have also wondered if the mass cancellation ability was being sought to allow the federal government to reduce its growing backlog of applications.
Asylum claims from Indian nationals increased from fewer than 500 a month in May 2023 to about 2,000 by July 2024, the document said.
The presentation says that verifying temporary resident visa applications from India slows down application processing.
It said processing time rose from an average of 30 days at the end of July 2023 to 54 a year later. It said approvals also started to decline in 2024 as it committed more resources to verification, from more than 63,000 in January to about 48,000 in June.
The presentation also noted a rise in “no boards” in India — passengers not allowed to board airplanes — as of the summer of 2024. By July 31 of that year 1,873 applicants had been identified for further questioning and sent procedural fairness letters outlining their rights and potential legal recourse.
No data about claims from Bangladesh was provided in the document.
Last month, IRCC told CBC News in a statement that new powers were not being proposed “with a specific group of people or situation in mind,” and that “decisions would not be taken unilaterally.”
A separate document from October 2024, a memorandum to then immigration minister Marc Miller, urged him to push for the department to be given extra visa cancellation powers without naming any individual countries.
“The ability to cancel temporary resident documents reduces security risks and limits potential misuse of such documents,” it noted.
The memo also said that the risk of applicants seeking judicial review of the cancellations would “depend on the particular facts of each case, notably whether procedural fairness was followed.” …
My latest in The Hill Times. Password protected so here is the analysis (tables simplified in the HT):
Analysis of citizenship applications between 2005 and 2023 reveals how the previous Conservative government’s pledge to make citizenship “harder to get and easier to lose” resulted in significant delays and reduced approval rates before political realities resulted in mitigating those impacts. The Liberal government reversion to previous residency and other requirements cemented a return to historic approval rates and processing times.
This analysis looks at four periods, roughly aligned to Census periods:
2005-10: During this period, the new Discover Canada citizenship study guide was introduced in 2009 with more detailed content and more complex language, along with a more rigorous knowledge test based upon the guide and more objective language assessments. The policy intent was in part to reduce the previous approval rate of approximately 95 percent to between 80 and 85 percent (“harder to get”).
2011-15: The impact of these 2009-10 operational policy changes was felt during this period. In addition, the Conservative government passed C-24 (Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act) in 2014, expanding knowledge testing and language assessment to those between 14 and 64 years old compared to the previous 18 and 54. Fees increased from $200 to $630 per adult or over $1,400 for a family of four in 2015. The fee increases may have been a Treasury Board condition in order to obtain funding to address a processing backlog. Revocation provisions for “treason and terror” were included.
2021-24: The citizenship oath was updated with a reference to indigenous treaty rights in 2021. The pandemic resulted in the virtual shutdown of citizenship ceremonies for a number of months and a shift to the majority of ceremonies taking place on line. The proposed repeal of the first generation limit in C-71 and replacement by a time-unlimited residency requirement would result in an unknown number of additional Canadian citizens.
Application data by gender, immigration category or country of birth highlights the dramatic initial impact of the policy changes of the Conservative government and how these were relaxed by the Conservatives themselves before having virtually no impact after a number of years under the Liberals. The same pattern applies no matter what the variable, the 2011-15 period was the worst period in terms of delays and approval rates.
Figure 1 provides the overview by period highlighting that in general, women applicants were granted citizenship faster than men and had higher approval rages, save for the 2011-15 period. The percentage not granted citizenship rose to over ten percent in 2012 and 2013, before recovering to just over seven percent in the last years of the Conservative government. Moreover, only about 20 percent of applications were processed within the service standard of one year 2010-13. Apart from the pandemic years 2021-22, service standards were met close to 80 percent of the time.
Figure 2 provides the category comparison, highlighting lower refusal rates for economic class and particularly relatively higher refusal rates immigrants for family and refugee class during the first years of the Liberal government, given that legislation reversing the Conservative age range requirement for knowledge and language assessment only came into force October 2017. But since then, refusal rates are negligible, less than three percent, or lower than 2005.
Figure 3 shows the impact on the five largest immigration source countries, showing again the same overall pattern. Of particular note is the higher rate of Chinese rejections across most periods which may reflect weaker language fluency compared to the other large source countries.
Concluding observations
This analysis highlights the impact that operational policy changes can have on citizenship, making naturalization harder or easier, particularly for family class and refugees. The effective relaxation of knowledge and language assessment in 2014-15 reflects high refusal rates were not politically tenable, particularly in the lead up to the 2015 election.
Application data suggests that immigrants delayed submitting applications 2016-17 once the Liberal government announced it would return to the previous 18 to 54 age requirements. The data also shows a drop in applications in 2020 reflecting applicants waiting for the government to implement its 2019 election commitment to eliminate citizenship fees.
Citizenship applicants pay attention to operational and legislative policy changes and adjust their application timing accordingly.
It is unclear whether or not citizenship changes would be a priority for an expected Conservative government and whether it would want to revert to Harper-era policies. However, citizenship changes would likely be a lessor priority than immigration changes given changing public sentiment on immigration that reflecting debates and discussion on immigration’s impact on housing and healthcare.
Moreover, the fact that the previous government had to soften its “harder to get” approach may provide a cautionary tale in terms of what may or may not be acceptable to immigrant-origin communities.
Methodological notes
Data provided by IRCC, 2005 to April 2024. This partial 2024 data included in overall 2021-24 numbers.
Before the pandemic, I stumbled into a pub and ordered their buttermilk fried chicken with waffles. The server happily took my order, and after about ten minutes, the order arrived. I was impressed with the speed. When I took my first bite, I suddenly spit it out – it was raw, with blood gushing through the undercooked flesh. It was not at all ready. It was clearly done in a hurry. In life, most things that are rushed do not end well. This is also true for institutions.
On September 1, 2022, IRCC came out with a news release, “Transitioning to online applications for permanent residence.” The announcement was promising until you read on: “…Starting on September 23, 2022 … IRCC will begin transitioning to 100% digital applications for most permanent residence programs.”
Twitter went into a frenzy – in just three weeks, applications for Permanent Residence will only be accepted through IRCC’s application portal. While the portal was soft-launched on March 31, 2021, the impression at the time was that IRCC would continue to iron out the problems with the online infrastructure. In the meantime, the department continued to accept paper applications for permanent residence.
We in the immigration bar understood this to be a good sign: IRCC appeared committed to ensuring that the transition to a digital application platform will have minimal technical issues at best. The backstop was there – in that people who have technical issues or are simply unsure if they trust the new platforms had the choice to submit a paper application.
We have also experienced nightmare scenarios where applicants needed to submit their applications on the same day but were not able to because of technical issues. The list of reasons is long, but it includes issues ranging from the website crashing, to the lack of space to submit complex humanitarian and compassionate applications that require heavy papering of evidence, to sudden portal outages, to files not being accepted due to ill-explained formatting issues.
Folks who have been trapped in these nightmare scenarios stand to lose a lot: they lose their status in Canada and endure long family separations. Sometimes the remedy involves filing a separate application that increases the ever-growing inventory of applications. Transitioning so recklessly to a zero-sum online intake system may have the unintended consequence of exacerbating the already politically toxic immigration backlog. Surely the Minister or the Prime Minister’s Office will not want this.
Make no mistake: this transition is a critical part of IRCC’s push for digital transformation in the department. Converting applications from paper to digital will accelerate the collection of big data that will allow IRCC to develop further its deployment of advanced analytics and machine learning in triaging an ever-growing pile of applications. Let’s also be very clear: electronic application platforms allow for a more accessible government. E-governance is generally a good thing. But this requires a proper and well-thought-out strategy for the deployment of technology. What is not good is a forcible ramming through the door of a system that has no emergency backstops.
To be sure, a lot of advocates have long pushed for online applications for Permanent Resident candidates. Yet the manner of hurried and almost cloak-and-dagger execution, with portals still riddled by technical problems, does not bode well among advocates and members of the bar.
It’s not too late. IRCC and Minister Sean Fraser can still put a pause to this. Minister Fraser should delay the compulsory implementation until a dialogue can be opened between the department and its stakeholders to hear what the issues are. As always, we at CILA are open to collaborating with the department to ensure that this project enjoys the highest possible chance of success.
Currently, only single adult applicants can submit their citizenship applications online. However, IRCC told CIC News in an email that adults may be able to apply together in fall 2022. After that, the online portal will open to minors and families.
“IRCC is working towards an expansion of the e-Application in order to allow Adults (i.e., 18 or older) to apply online together as a family or a group, and is currently targeting a Fall 2022 implementation,” an IRCC spokesperson said. “Planning has commenced for further e-Application expansion to minors under 18 years of age, as well as adults and minors applying together as a family or a group.”
IRCC said following the implementation of the e-application, it will begin to develop “additional functionality for representatives.” Currently, representatives can only help prepare online applications, but cannot submit on a client’s behalf. They can communicate with IRCC on the applicant’s behalf before and after the online application is submitted.
“In November of 2021, IRCC updated the system so clients can submit the IMM 5476 – Use of Representatives form, allowing them to use the services of a representative in preparing their applications. We also updated the screening questions to allow clients working with representatives to submit their application electronically,” IRCC wrote.
“Following the implementation of the e-Application expansion to minors and groups, the Department will begin development of additional functionality for representatives.”
In August 2021, IRCC claimed online citizenship applications would open to families and minors later in the year, and to representatives in 2022.
IRCC released the full 2021 data on the number of applications for citizenship. Given the delays in IRCC entering application data in GCMS (for both Permanent Residents and citizenship), this three-month old data reflects an accurate number.
The month-by-month overview:
With the full-year data, I can now update the overview chart of the impact of COVID-19 on the range of immigration-related programs 2021-18 (How the government used the pandemic to sharply increase immigration), showing that applications declined by 10.3 percent compared to new citizens, 37.6 percent.:
The average for applications in 2021 was about 19,000 monthly, with small variations.
Given current processing trends, an average of 31,000 for the first quarter, IRCC should be able to continue chipping away at the backlog of 400,000 (April 11-12) unless applications increase significantly.
Lastly, my standard chart, comparing applications, new citizens and new Permanent Residents:
Will be interesting to see the response, and the degree to which information is forthcoming:
Given that significant delays in citizenship applications (over two years) risk disenfranchising Canadians who are waiting for their citizenship in order to vote, and this issue is particularly urgent in light of the June 2nd Ontario provincial election, the government should move quickly to address this issue so that all Canadians who are eligible for citizenship and who choose to apply are able to participate fully in our democratic life. In light of the situation, the committee requests the Minister appear before the committee for two hours by May 27, 2022 to outline actions taken and further actions intended.
Multicultural Meanderings 