A tribunal under the Department of Immigration accepted tens of thousands of asylum claims without conducting in-person oral hearings that have typically been required, according to a new report by a former board member of the tribunal published by the C.D. Howe Institute.
The Jan. 29 report said that since 2019, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) has followed a policy that allowed it to accept refugee claims based solely on the basis of written applications, without utilizing in-person hearings. The policy, known as “File Review,” could exempt entire categories of claims from the default requirement of in-person adjudication.
