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.
James Yousif, a former director of policy at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and a former member at IRB’s Refugee Protection Division, wrote in the report that by removing in-person questioning used to test the credibility of asylum claims, the IRB may have “weakened adjudicative, program, and security integrity,” while also exceeding its lawful authority.
Yousif wrote that while the IRB was created in the aftermath of a 1985 Supreme Court of Canada decision requiring that an oral hearing be provided to asylum claimants, the agency launched a pilot in 2017 that allowed certain categories of asylum claims to be accepted without a hearing. File Review was formally institutionalized in 2019.
The report said tens of thousands of asylum-seekers have been “rapidly” accepted into Canada through the policy, and while it was introduced as a way to accelerate decision-making and reduce the backlog of asylum-seekers, “the available data provide no evidence that it achieved this goal.”
The report said that despite increases in staffing and funding for the IRB between 2016 and 2024, the asylum-seeker backlog increased from 17,000 to 300,000 while Canada’s overall asylum acceptance rate rose from 64 percent to 80 percent, which it said was “roughly double that of peer jurisdictions.” By contrast, Ireland accepted 30 percent of claims in 2024 while Sweden accepted 40 percent and Germany accepted 59 percent.
Yousif also wrote that while the acceptance of asylum claims can be “rendered immediately” and result in the file being closed, denials of claims “require much more time and effort.” Since these negative decisions are likely to be appealed and can be closely scrutinized by immigration lawyers, the report said the IRB “might prefer positive over negative decisions.”
The report added that without questioning claimants during hearings, the File Review policy may end up facilitating fraud and encouraging more fraudulent asylum claims. “Asking questions is also a part of Canada’s security screening architecture and cannot be skipped without increasing national security risks,” Yousif wrote.
He said that when officials at the Canada Border Services Agency and IRCC were briefed on File Review, they noted a security concern that the countries with high acceptance rates for asylum-seekers were also countries that “represent the highest concerns in terms of the serious inadmissibilities” and certain exclusions for the Public Safety Portfolio.
“Countries with conditions that result in the highest rates of acceptance for asylum claims are, as a result of those same conditions, among the most dangerous countries in the world,” Yousif wrote.
The perception of Canada having a high rate of accepting asylum claims could also “significantly influence” the likelihood that asylum-seekers would make a claim in Canada as opposed to countries with lower acceptance rates, he wrote.
Yousif added that while it’s not possible to determine whether the asylum backlog was affected by File Review and the IRB’s high rate of acceptance for claims, “what can be determined is that File Review failed to achieve its primary objective of reducing the backlog.”
Claims will not be accepted without a hearing if the security screening confirmation has not yet been received, if issues related to the claimant’s identity require further examination, if “serious credibility issues” arise from the documents in the file, or if there are “complex legal or factual issues that require a hearing to resolve.”
The IRCC did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment before publication time.
