The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) recognizes that public trust and confidence in its integrity, objectivity, impartiality, and transparency is critical. A credible and effective complaints process is one key mechanism for earning and maintaining that trust.
In that context, the Board commissioned an independent third-party evaluation of its Process for making a complaint about a member to review what works well and what needs improvement. The Evaluation Report and the associated Management response and action plan (MRAP) are now publicly available.
Conducted by Prairie Research Associates, the evaluation looked at the design, implementation, credibility, impartiality, and procedural fairness of the new 2017 Complaints Procedure. Overall, the 2017 Procedure is more streamlined and has more clearly articulated steps. The complaints process is more transparent in terms of its annual reporting of statistics, of complaint summaries, and when communicating with complainants. When comparing the IRB's annual reporting to that of similar adjudicative bodies, the evaluation found the IRB's reporting to be the most comprehensive.
In line with the Board's commitment to continuous improvement, the evaluation report provided eight recommendations related to implementation, credibility, effectiveness, and efficiency. The Board accepted all the recommendations and has laid out an action plan to complete all actions by the end of fiscal year 2021-22.
Moving forward, the IRB is confident that implementing the recommendations will further contribute to the efficiency and effectiveness of the complaints process. It will allow the Board to better serve those who appear before it.
Richard Wex
Chairperson