Quality performance in the Refugee Protection Division 2025: Summary report

Methodology

​70 cases reviewed | 24 indicators across 6 themes

The study aims to assess the quality of decision making to identify strengths and areas for improvement, as well as to inform performance reporting to the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS).

A third-party reviewer was hired to conduct the assessment. Paul Daly is the University Research Chair in Administrative Law and Governance at the University of Ottawa and a leading commentator on Canadian administrative law. He is also an expert in decision-making in the administrative state, with research cited by courts and tribunals across Canada, including the Supreme Court. He was supported by the IRB Audit and Evaluation team.

The cases in the sample were proportionally representative of the overall case composition for region, language, and outcome.

Considerations

To ensure quality and consistency in the assessment, a reviewer was selected based on their in-depth knowledge of the ​Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), refugee and immigration matters, and administrative law. Their observations do not lend themselves to firm conclusions on legal matters such as the correct application of the law, the weighing of the evidence, or the fairness of the proceedings from a natural justice perspective. Only a court reviewing the case can arrive at such conclusions. Where sample sizes are too small for ‘if applicable’ indicators, observations or recommendations may still have been provided but these are not based on representative findings

Overall ​performance

Percentage of cases that met or exceeded expectations

Performance by theme

Pre-proceeding readiness

Fair and respectful proceedings

Focused and robust proceedings

Reasons state conclusions on all relevant determinative issues

Decisions provide findings and analysis necessary to justify conclusions

Reasons are transparent and intelligible

What we did well

The Refugee Protection Division performed well in many areas, especially in being well-prepared for hearings and ensuring fair, respectful, focused and robust proceedings.

• Members are invariably well prepared for hearings, with a firm grasp of the factual material and relevant legal questions.
  
• Members introduce hearings to claimants and counsel very well, using standard templates to avoid confusion and to ensure consistency.
  
• Members pursue relevant lines of questioning in a non-confrontational, trauma-informed way to elicit relevant information from claimants.
  
• Members write concise reasons that address the determinative issues and generally meet standards of best practice in contemporary administrative tribunals.
  

Recommendations

Hearing preparation

1. The Board should exercise due diligence in records management to ensure that all relevant documentation is available in its document management system for the member’s review prior to a hearing.
   
2. The division should engage members to develop revised templates or scripts on plain language explanations of the hearing process and best practices for interpretation. This will improve accessibility and facilitate more efficient hearings such as by minimizing delays or issues stemming from misunderstandings. (See the report for the full recommendation around hearing process scripts and interpretation best practices scripts.)
   

Hearing management

3. The division should engage members to identify red flags that indicate a hearing may become difficult to support members in proactively responding to and mitigating potential conflict. Members should be encouraged to spot these red flags and take breaks pre-emptively to ensure that hearings run expeditiously.
   

Decision-making quality

4. Reminders on positive decision criteria: The division should remind members to cover all parts of the legal test for refugee status and address the issue of subjective fear explicitly when making positive determinations to improve the comprehensibility of positive decisions and contribute to accessibility.
   
5. Training: The division should provide members with regular training on point-first writing, issues-based analysis, and summary writing to ensure decisions are justified, transparent, and intelligible.
   
6. Adjudicative tools: The division should identify decisions that are particularly effective examples of point-first writing, issues-based analysis, and summarizing conclusions at the outset of a determination. This will support ongoing implementation of best practices for decision writing.
   

Management Response

The RPD accepts recommendations 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 in full. Recommendation 3 is partially accepted. Some recommendations have already been addressed:

• The RPD and the Registry reviewed their scripts incorporating elements addressed in the recommendations.
  
• The RPD provides regular support and training to members including areas of the recommendations such as managing difficult situations in the hearing room, and decision writing.
  
• Training was, and will be provided again this year, to all members on making credibility findings and adequacy.​
  

The RPD will review and strengthen its templates and share examples of decisions that demonstrate best practices in decision writing. The Registry will review its processes regarding late disclosure.​

For more information

For further information, please consult the full report: Quality performance in the Refugee Protection Division 2025​.​