Canada’s auditor general calls on feds to create online portal for refugees amid backlogs

Some applicants had waited almost three years for a decision, and as of the end of last year, 99,000 refugee applications were still waiting to be processed.

Refugees are being left behind by Canada’s oversized immigration backlogs, and the federal auditor general is calling on the government to immediately create a way for them to apply online.

A report from Auditor General Karen Hogan released on Thursday suggests that while processing times improved for most permanent residency programs in 2022, they remained long for refugee and humanitarian programs.

Some applicants had waited almost three years for a decision, and as of the end of last year, 99,000 refugee applications were still waiting to be processed.

“Many applicants will wait years for a decision in the current processing environment,” Hogan said in her report.

She said refugees would benefit from a secure online application process that was recently introduced for other immigration streams, and is calling for it to be created “without further delay.”

The government had already planned to make online applications available to refugee claimants, and hopes to introduce the feature by the end of the month for privately sponsored refugees and in November for government-assisted refugees.

Hogan found that some of the delays are a result of higher workloads in offices with lower staff levels.

For example, almost half of the backlogged refugee applications were being handled by offices in Kenya and Tanzania. The auditor found the Nairobi office in Kenya had about half the staff but almost double the assigned workload of the office in Turkey.