By Canadian Press

Liberal promise for refugee system reform postponed as feds consider options

May 15, 2017 | 2:00 AM

OTTAWA — A Liberal election promise to overhaul the way asylum claims are handled has been postponed indefinitely despite increased numbers of people seeking refuge which put the system at risk, The Canadian Press has learned. 

One of the options on the table, multiple sources have told The Canadian Press, is rejigging the historic Immigration and Refugee Board and handing some of its authority to the Immigration Department.

But those advocating for action before backlogs threaten the integrity of the system say they are up against a government which seems to have lost interest in spending more money or political capital to help asylum seekers.

The starting point is the designated country of origin system, which determines how quickly asylum claims are heard based on where they are from — a system that should, in theory, weed out unfounded claims faster.

Internal evaluations have shown that hasn’t quite worked and the system has drawn the ire of refugee advocates for creating a two-tier approach that includes unworkable timelines for hearing cases and their appeals.

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The Liberals had been on the cusp of doing away with it, going even farther than their original promise to use an expert panel to determine which countries belonged on that list.

But a planned January roll-out was postponed after the election of U.S. President Donald Trump and the subsequent Liberal cabinet shuffle that brought a new immigration minister.

Then in March, as the issue of illegal border crossers dominated headlines and question period, plans to repeal the country of origin scheme were scrapped again, sources said.

They haven’t been rescheduled, even as the IRB itself has joined those saying the system needs to go. 

“It would simplify our life from a case management point of view,” chairperson Mario Dion said in an interview with The Canadian Press in March.

“I don’t have a political view.”

The Liberals do, observers said.

When they came to power and moved to fulfil a promise to resettle 25,000 Syrians, the government believed it had broad public support for refugees, said immigration lawyer and refugee advocate Lorne Waldman.

Things have changed.

“The concern at the centre is that support has dissipated significantly because of a series of factors, the most important one being the emergence of Donald Trump,” he said.

“And I think the concern is amplified by the Conservative leadership race, where you have many of the candidates taking a very anti-immigrant posturing in their campaign.”

A spokesman for the prime minister’s office said the overhaul to the country of origins policy was simply rescheduled by the department.

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan pressed the government Monday on the delays, saying a growing backlog puts the integrity of the asylum system at risk.

“Is the government blind to this or are they just happy to break yet another promise?”

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen said the government continues to consult stakeholders and the IRB.

Claims have been rising steadily since the fall of 2015, though new numbers released Monday show they were down slightly in April of this year. Just over 3,000 people filed asylum applications in April, compared with 3,440 in March. So far this year, 12,040 claims have been filed, more than were lodged each of 2013 and 2014.

The issue shot to attention when hundreds of people began illegally crossing into Canada from the United States earlier this year. The Liberals have been under pressure from both Conservatives and the NDP to act, but so far haven’t done anything.

“Our system is geared to deal with those fluctuations,” Hussen said Monday.

But if backlogs build, the government will find itself in the same situation that led to the country of origins policy in the first place —  long waits for decisions that lure people with weaker claims to come to Canada, because they can work and access health care while they wait for a decision.

The IRB is aware of the problem and has instituted reforms, including allowing claims from Syria, Iraq, Eritrea and as of June 1, Afghanistan, Burundi, Egypt, and Yemen to be decided without a hearing.

Those countries were selected because claims from there have high acceptance rates, there is a high volume of them and most are generally not complex.

Sources say claims like those are the kind that could go to the Immigration Department, as opposed to the IRB, for adjudication.

The idea is fraught with difficulty.

There’s a big difference between the work the department ordinarily does and the work refugee judges do, said Vancouver immigration and refugee lawyer Peter Edelmann.

“It’s very different from an individual perspective in terms of the stakes and from a constitutional perspective in terms of the law to make a fast decision on an  . . . application for a skilled worker than it is to send someone back where they’re at risk of being tortured and killed,” he said.

The IRB was established in 1989 because of a Supreme Court ruling saying refuge claimants required an oral hearing, leading the government to establish the arms-length, quasi-judicial tribunal.

Giving bureaucrats a say in refugee determination risks politicizing the system, said Sean Rehaag, a professor at Osgoode Hall law school.

He said the current number of claims doesn’t require dramatic change.

“Refugee decision making is only a tiny fraction of the Canadian government’s budget and they can make the so-called crisis go away by adequately funding the IRB,” he said.

Stephanie Levitz, The Canadian Press