2019-20 Departmental Results Report

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​About this publication

ISSN number: 2561-0759

Table of contents

1. Chairperson’s message
2. Results at a glance and operating context
3. Results: what we achieved
1. Core responsibility
   
2. Internal Services
4. Analysis of trends in spending and human resources
5. Actual expenditures
1. Actual human resources
2. Expenditures by vote
3. Government of Canada spending and activities
4. Financial statements and financial statement highlights
6. Additional information
1. Organizational profile
2. Raison d'être, mandate and role: who we are and what we do
3. Reporting framework
4. Supporting information on the program inventory
5. Supplementary information tables
6. Federal tax expenditures
7. Organizational contact information
7. Appendix: definitions

Chairperson’s message

I am pleased to present the 2019–20 Departmental Results Report for the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB, or the Board).

As Canada’s largest administrative tribunal, the IRB has the important mandate of resolving immigration and refugee cases efficiently, fairly and in accordance with the law.

Fiscal year 2019–20 was characterized by performance, growth and innovation, as the Board pursued its ambitious Growth and Transformation Agenda in response to its challenging operating context, including managing the largest number of refugee claims referred to the Board in its 30-year history. Set around three strategic priorities – improved productivity and efficiency; enhanced quality and consistency in decision-making; and strengthened management – this multi-year agenda aims to double the size of the organization within three years and support the Board’s vision of being a high performing, competent, and increasingly digital tribunal, contributing to a more accessible, fair and efficient immigration and refugee determination system.

In 2019–20, the Board managed unprecedented growth across the organization. Temporary funding provided in Budget 2019 provided the IRB with the largest investment in the Board’s history, providing resources to recruit 450 employees and the largest number of Governor-in-Council appointees since the asylum system was reformed in 2012. This funding helped increase access to justice for refugee claimants by materially slowing the growth of the inventory of claims and associated wait times for a decision.

In addition to growth, the IRB focused on developing an organizational culture of performance and results in support of improved productivity. New performance monitoring tools were put in place across the organization, providing improved operational awareness and insights upon which business decisions were regularly taken to position the Board to meet performance objectives. Further, the Board designed and introduced a range of efficiency measures across the decision-making continuum, from improved claim intake and case management strategies to dedicated task forces and digitization, aimed at achieving productivity improvements. Combined, these efforts led to impressive results:

• The Refugee Protection Division exceeded ambitious performance targets and finalized more than 42,000 refugee protection decisions, representing a 22% increase over 2018–19. This is the second-highest number of finalizations in the history of the IRB. The average time to finalize a refugee claim also decreased to 15 months, from 19 months in 2018–19.   
• The Refugee Appeal Division met performance targets and finalized nearly 11,000 appeals, the most since the Refugee Appeal Division was established and representing a 100% increase over appeals finalized in 2018–19. The average time to finalize an appeal decreased to eight months from nine months in 2018–19. At year end, the pending inventory totalled approximately 8,400 appeals, 20% lower than at mid-year.
• The Immigration Division finalized more than 12,000 detention reviews, 5% above its funded capacity and continued to meet its strict statutory time limits within which detention reviews are to be conducted.
• The Immigration Appeal Division finalized roughly 5,800 appeals, which was within 5% of its target, and met its newly established service standard of finalizing appeals within one year of notices of appeal being received by the Board at least 80% of the time.

The Board also successfully launched a wide-ranging agenda in support of enhanced quality and consistency in decision-making. Notable elements of this agenda included introducing a Quality Assurance Framework, a strategic document outlining the various initiatives in place to ensure quality decision-making at the Board; enhancing professional development for decision-makers, with a focus on gender-related claims; introducing annual third-party quality audits of each Division’s decision-making practices; launching a third-party evaluation of the IRB’s process for making a complaint about member conduct; as well as introducing strengthened adjudicative tools and guidance for decision-makers, including a revised Chairperson’s Guideline on Detention, and completing a review of the Chairperson’s Guideline on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) in consultation with our members, experts and stakeholders.  

Finally, in support of our priority to strengthen management practices, the Board announced its digital strategy and made important investments in information technology to transition from a paper-based organization to becoming a digital organization. In support of people management, the Board developed a workplace mental health strategy, actively continued to promote an organizational culture of psychological safety guided by our values of civility, respect, diversity and inclusion, and established a task force to address Phoenix-related pay issues experienced by IRB employees, which yielded early and positive results. 

The Board’s strong performance in 2019–20 is a credit to the commitment and professionalism of all IRB personnel. I am proud of what we have accomplished and of the important work we do for the benefit of Canadians and for those who are in need of Canada’s protection. Of course, we could not have imagined the challenges caused by the global pandemic at the very end of the year, nor the impact that it would have on our operations and staff. I am confident, however, that the strategic directions outlined in our Growth and Transformation Agenda will position the Board to successfully address the challenges posed by the pandemic and that the IRB will continue to successfully fulfill its mandate of providing access to justice, while protecting the health and safety of our employees and those who appear before the Board.

Richard Wex
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer

Results at a glance and operating context

Improved productivity:

The IRB finalized 72,936 cases in 2019–20, a 21% increase over 2018–19, when it finalized 60,188 cases.

Reduced wait times:

The average time to finalize a refugee claim decreased to 15 months, from 19 months in 2018–19. Targets for timely finalizations were exceeded for immigration admissibility hearings and detention reviews. Further, on April 1, 2019, new service standards to finalize immigration appeals within one year were established, and subsequently met.  

Focus on quality:

A Quality Assurance Framework in support of high-quality decision-making was introduced; training was enhanced; the Chairperson’s Guideline on Detention was revised; and, an evaluation of the process for making a complaint on IRB member conduct was launched.

Strengthened management:

A digital strategy was launched, and a workplace wellness strategy was developed. 

For more information on the IRB’s plans, priorities and results achieved, see the “Results: what we achieved” section of this report.

Text version

Results at a glane

Funds used	$200,407,305
Full-time equivalents	1,577
Finalizations	72,936
72,936 finalizations	21% increase from 2018–19
102,700 intake	8% increase from 2018–19
103,737 inventory of pending cases	18% increase from 2018–19

Results: what we achieved

Core responsibility

Adjudication of immigration and refugee cases

Description: The IRB renders quality decisions and resolves cases in a timely manner regarding immigration and refugee protection cases. This includes determining refugee protection claims and appeals and applications to vacate or cease refugee protection. It also includes making decisions on admissibility hearings and detention reviews, and on appeals on certain immigration cases (e.g. family sponsorship applications, certain removal orders, applications based on meeting residency obligations and admissibility hearings).

Results:

The IRB has one core responsibility and a single organizational result: the fair and timely adjudication of immigration and refugee cases by four adjudicative divisions: the Refugee Protection Division, the Refugee Appeal Division, the Immigration Division, and the Immigration Appeal Division.

For 2019–20, the IRB put in place three strategic objectives to support our core responsibility: sustain and improve productivity, enhance the quality and consistency of decision-making, and strengthen management, with a focus on people management. These objectives guided the work of the Board’s four Divisions, to support the fair and timely adjudication of immigration and refugee cases.

The IRB undertook several initiatives to sustain and improve productivity and to better monitor performance:

Early in the year, the Board strengthened its centre of excellence for data and analytics by introducing data visualization tools and strengthening monitoring tools such as weekly performance pulse checks, and monthly and quarterly performance reports. These tools facilitated the monitoring of progress against operational plans, and projections informed case management strategies across each Division.

At the Refugee Protection Division, additional capacity provided for in Budget 2019 coupled with the use of diverse case management and scheduling strategies helped maximize productivity and allowed the Division to finalize 22% more cases than the previous year.

Building on the success of the previous year, the IRB extended the mandate of the Chairperson’s Task Force on Less Complex Claims (Task Force) to continue to identify and triage cases that were appropriate for a paper review rather than a hearing, or for shorter hearings. Using short hearings was an effective scheduling strategy to maximize hearing room capacity. As a result, the Task Force finalized nearly 10,000 less complex claims over the course of the year, which led to shorter processing times overall for refugee claims. Together, internal efficiencies along with increases in temporary funding through Budget 2019 allowed the Division to exceed its performance targets by approximately 5% and finalize 42,556 refugee claims.

The Refugee Appeal Division continued to adopt innovative practices, including digitizing its full inventory and launching a national file management process, which improved the Division’s capacity to manage its caseload on a national basis and allowed for alignment between caseload and resources regardless of differences in regional intake. Coupled with the additional appointment of Governor-in-Council member decision-makers provided for through Budget 2019, the Division finalized 10,859 refugee appeals in 2019–20, which was a 105% increase from the previous fiscal year. 

For its part, despite a significant increase in detention review referrals, particularly in the Eastern Region, the Immigration Division met the demands of intake, finalizing 12,129 detention reviews and 1,584 admissibility hearings.

At the Immigration Appeal Division, a comprehensive review of procedures was conducted to improve the immigration appeal process by beginning to pilot digital processes to allow the exchange of information electronically and improve the processes between the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the IRB to produce the appeal record. In addition, the Division continued to focus on the early resolution of appeals and decision-makers pre-hearing preparation, which taken together, allowed the Division to finalize 5,808 immigration appeals in 2019–20.

To complement the focus on productivity, the Board put continued focus on the quality and consistency of decision-making:

During this reporting period, strengthened training, professional development and adjudicative tools were a focus for the Board.  

The Refugee Protection Division complemented its existing training and professional development programs by providing additional mandatory training on appropriate questioning and enhancing credibility assessments of gender-related claims and claims related to sexual orientation and gender identity and expression (SOGIE) to all members throughout the year. The Division also piloted an innovative Knowledge Management Tool for members in the fall of 2019, which provided members easy access to research products, country of origin information, and standardized templates to support the writing of decisions. The pilot will be evaluated in 2020–21 and, if the results are positive, this Tool will be expanded across the Division.

In 2019–20, the Refugee Appeal Division focused on gender-related training, sexual orientation guidelines and jurisprudence, gender-based violence and trauma-informed approaches to adjudication. The Division also organized a national training seminar for all members, by engaging external experts from the Federal Court, other administrative tribunals and academia to deliver sessions on administrative law, accessibility and bias.

At the Immigration Division, a revised Chairperson’s Guideline on Detention took effect on April 1, 2019. It  provided an opportunity to reinforce best practices and assist members of the Division in carrying out their duties under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act while promoting consistency, coherence and fairness when making detention review decisions. The Division also continued to provide its members with ongoing professional development in relation to critical issues (e.g., the best interests of the child) and worked with provincial legal aid organizations to expand legal aid representation to persons concerned in Ontario and Alberta.  

The IRB also created a Member Learning Secretariat, which functions as a centre of expertise for the delivery of training to members in all Divisions, provides organizational support and promotes varied platforms for learning.

Further, the Board developed a quality assurance framework to outline the various initiatives and processes in place to ensure the quality and consistency of decision-making at the Refugee Protection Division and the Refugee Appeal Division. The framework, which leverages a model of the continuous improvement cycle, will continue to evolve as the elements of the framework take shape.

To support its significant growth this year, and to create a high performing organization and a positive environment, the Board also focused on strengthening management:   

Strong management of Canada’s asylum system as a whole means having strong communication and collaboration between the different government departments that play a role in that system. 

The IRB collaborated with its portfolio partners, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the CBSA, on the Asylum System Management Board, a Deputy Minister-level committee that  aligns priorities for the three organizations, looks at trends impacting the system, and works through collective challenges.

An Integrated Claims Analysis Centre pilot was launched in September 2019. As part of this project, IRCC and CBSA employees work out of the same office on files that they are preparing for referral to the IRB. This creates efficiencies and synergies and was a response to recommendations from the Audit on Processing of Asylum Claims from the spring 2019 report of the Auditor General of Canada. 

Results achieved

Budgetary financial resources (dollars)

Human resources (full-time equivalents)

In 2019–20, Budget 2019 provided the IRB with temporary funding to increase the number of refugee protection claims being finalized. This temporary funding largely accounts for the difference between planned spending and total authorities.

Actual expenditures are greater than planned due to increased resources that were acquired with the temporary funding; this enabled the IRB to achieve a significant increase in finalizations.

Financial, human resources and performance information for the IRB’s Program Inventory is available in GC InfoBase.

Internal Services

Description: Internal Services are those groups of related activities and resources that the federal government considers to be services in support of programs and/or required to meet corporate obligations of an organization. Internal Services refers to the activities and resources of the 10 distinct service categories that support Program delivery in the organization, regardless of the Internal Services delivery model in a department. The 10 service categories are: Acquisition Management Services; Communication Services; Financial Management Services; Human Resources Management Services; Information Management Services; Information Technology Services; Legal Services; Material Management Services; Management and Oversight Services; and Real Property Management Services.

Budgetary financial resources (dollars)

Human resources (FTEs)

The difference between planned spending in 2019–20 and total authorities is largely due to temporary funding received by the IRB in Budget 2019. This funding was allocated to Internal Services to increase capacity to support a higher number of case finalizations.

Higher than planned spending is the result of investments in program support infrastructure, which includes accommodations, equipment, and information technology, as well as an increased number of full-time employees.

Results:

Internal Services are key to the IRB’s success, and played a prominent role in supporting its three priorities. In 2019–20, as the IRB continued to grow, it invested in internal support services to help enable the organization to achieve its growing operational commitments. The Board reorganized its internal structure to better enable integration and coordination across the organization, which included the Executive Director assuming the additional role of Chief Financial Officer, and a new directorate created to focus on strategic planning and reporting, and audits and evaluations.

Investments in information technology and the IRB’s Digital Strategy provided the basis for strengthened performance measurement and reporting and support for the transition from paper to digital files. Significant investments in technical infrastructure upgrades, in collaboration with Shared Services Canada, allowed the Board to begin modernizing its network infrastructure as a critical enabler to the IRB Digital Strategy. The Digital Transformation Team, created in 2019–20, pursued initiatives such as cloud adoption, innovation and experimentation with a focus on Office 365 and MS Teams, and developed support for remote claimant testimony. To support case management, the Team launched the My Case portal to share case information with counsel and made investments to improve the Board’s case management system.

With the goal of supporting employees through workplace challenges, the IRB made several enhancements to improve employees’ pay experience, including implementing a task force to lead initiatives to address existing pay issues and avoid future ones. New timelines for submitting staffing and pay requests were implemented to help reduce the number of new pay issues. In addition, the Board increased its internal capacity to address straightforward pay situations more quickly and worked with Public Services and Procurement Canada’s Pay Centre on complex files. Work continued to improve internal tracking mechanisms to provide more accurate departmental reporting on pay issues. A new quarterly reporting process was implemented to ensure regular discussions between managers and employees about individual pay issues, and new or improved tools and training were provided to all staff.

Employee wellness continued to be an important priority. Working with unions and other employee representatives, the IRB appointed workplace mental health champions, and in collaboration with its union/management committee, administered an organizational survey to obtain a baseline of employee perceptions of workplace wellness and mental health to inform Board-wide communications and initiatives. It also pursued measures to promote psychological health and well-being across the Board, such as the Canadian Mental Health Association’s “Not Myself Today” campaign.

Analysis of trends in spending and human resources

Actual expenditures

Departmental spending trend graph

The following graph presents planned voted and statutory spending over time.

Increased spending through 2020–21 reflects temporary investments made by the Government to increase the number of refugee claims finalized. In July 2020, the Government announced the extension of this temporary funding through 2022–23 to continue to support a higher number of finalizations. The IRB was allocated $150 million in 2021–22 and 2022–23. This temporary funding is not reflected in the departmental spending graph.

Budgetary performance summary for Core Responsibility and Internal Services (dollars)

Increased expenditures through 2019–20 are the result of costs incurred to increase the number of claims being finalized. Expenses are forecasted to increase further in 2020–21 due to temporary investments made by the Government to maintain a higher level of finalizations.

2019–20 Budgetary actual gross spending summary (dollars)

Actual human resources

Human resources summary for Core Responsibility and Internal Services

The overall growth in the IRB’s employee complement through 2020–21 reflects the Government’s temporary investments to increase the number of claims being finalized. 

Expenditures by vote

For information on the IRB’s organizational voted and statutory expenditures, consult the Public Accounts of Canada 2019–20.

Government of Canada spending and activities

Information on the alignment of the IRB’s spending with the Government of Canada’s spending and activities is available in GC InfoBase.

Financial statements and financial statement highlights

Financial statements

The IRB’s financial statements (unaudited) for the year ended March 31, 2020, are available on the departmental website.

Financial statement highlights

Condensed Statement of Operations (unaudited) for the year ended March 31, 2020 (dollars)

Total expenditures have increased compared to the planned and previous year’s expenditures due to costs incurred to augment capacity to process a larger number of claims.

Condensed Statement of Financial Position (unaudited) as of March 31, 2020 (dollars)

Total net liabilities increased primarily due to an increase in payables at year end. This increase is offset by an increase in total net financial assets. Overall, the departmental net financial position declined by over 50%, primarily due to investments made in technology and physical infrastructure to support a higher level of refugee claim finalizations.

Additional information

Organizational profile

Appropriate minister: The Honourable Marco E. L. Mendicino

Institutional head: Richard Wex, Chairperson

Ministerial portfolio: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship

Enabling instrument: Immigration and Refugee Protection Act

Year of incorporation / commencement: 1989

Raison d'être, mandate and role: who we are and what we do

“Raison d’être, mandate and role: who we are and what we do” is available on the IRB’s website.

Reporting framework

The IRB’s Departmental Results Framework and Program Inventory of record for 2019–20 are shown below.

Supporting information on the program inventory

Financial, human resources and performance information for the IRB’s Program Inventory is available in GC InfoBase.

Supplementary information tables

The following supplementary information tables are available on the IRB’s website:

• Departmental sustainable development strategy
• Response to parliamentary committees and external audits
• Gender-based analysis plus

Federal tax expenditures

The tax system can be used to achieve public policy objectives through the application of special measures such as low tax rates, exemptions, deductions, deferrals and credits. The Department of Finance Canada publishes cost estimates and projections for these measures each year in the Report on Federal Tax Expenditures. This report also provides detailed background information on tax expenditures, including descriptions, objectives, historical information and references to related federal spending programs. The tax measures presented in this report are the responsibility of the Minister of Finance.

Organizational contact information

Mailing address:

Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada
Minto Place, Canada Building
344 Slater Street, 12th Floor
Ottawa, Ontario  K1A 0K1

For more contact information, visit the Contact Us webpage.

Follow IRB on Twitter or Facebook .

Appendix: definitions

appropriation (crédit)
Any authority of Parliament to pay money out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund.

budgetary expenditures (dépenses budgétaires)
Operating and capital expenditures; transfer payments to other levels of government, organizations or individuals; and payments to Crown corporations.

core responsibility (responsabilité essentielle)
An enduring function or role performed by a department. The intentions of the department with respect to a core responsibility are reflected in one or more related departmental results that the department seeks to contribute to or influence.

Departmental Plan (Plan ministériel)
A report on the plans and expected performance of an appropriated department over a 3‑year period. Departmental Plans are usually tabled in Parliament each spring.

departmental priority (priorité ministerielle)
A plan or project that a department has chosen to focus and report on during the planning period. Priorities represent the things that are most important or what must be done first to support the achievement of the desired departmental results.

departmental result (résultat ministériel)
A consequence or outcome that a department seeks to achieve. A departmental result is often outside departments’ immediate control, but it should be influenced by program-level outcomes.

departmental result indicator (indicateur de résultat ministériel)
A quantitative measure of progress on a departmental result.

departmental results framework (Cadre ministériel des résultats)
A framework that connects the department’s core responsibilities to its departmental results and departmental result indicators.

Departmental Results Report (Rapport sur les résultats ministériels)
A report on a department’s actual accomplishments against the plans, priorities and expected results set out in the corresponding Departmental Plan.

experimentation (expérimentation)
The conducting of activities that seek to first explore, then test and compare the effects and impacts of policies and interventions in order to inform evidence-based decision-making, and improve outcomes for Canadians, by learning what works, for whom and in what circumstances.

Experimentation is related to, but distinct from innovation (the trying of new things), because it involves a rigorous comparison of results. For example, using a new website to communicate with Canadians can be an innovation; systematically testing the new website against existing outreach tools or an old website to see which one leads to more engagement, is experimentation.

full‑time equivalent (équivalent temps plein)
A measure of the extent to which an employee represents a full person‑year charge against a departmental budget. For a particular position, the full‑time equivalent figure is the ratio of number of hours the person actually works divided by the standard number of hours set out in the person’s collective agreement.

gender-based analysis plus (GBA+) (analyse comparative entre les sexes plus [ACS+])
An analytical process used to assess how diverse groups of women, men and gender-diverse people experience policies, programs and services based on multiple factors including race ethnicity, religion, age, and mental or physical disability.

government-wide priorities (priorités pangouvernementales)
For the purpose of the 2019–20 Departmental Results Report, those high-level themes outlining the government’s agenda in the 2019 Speech from the Throne, namely: Fighting Climate Change; Strengthening the Middle Class; Walking the Road of Reconciliation; Keeping Canadians Safe and Healthy; and Positioning Canada for Success in an Uncertain World.

horizontal initiative (initiative horizontale)
An initiative where two or more federal organizations are given funding to pursue a shared outcome, often linked to a government priority.

non‑budgetary expenditures (dépenses non budgétaires)
Net outlays and receipts related to loans, investments and advances, which change the composition of the financial assets of the Government of Canada.

performance (rendement)
What an organization did with its resources to achieve its results, how well those results compare to what the organization intended to achieve, and how well lessons learned have been identified.

performance indicator (indicateur de rendement)
A qualitative or quantitative means of measuring an output or outcome, with the intention of gauging the performance of an organization, program, policy or initiative respecting expected results.

Performance reporting (production de rapports sur le rendement)
The process of communicating evidence‑based performance information. Performance reporting supports decision-making, accountability and transparency.

plan (plan)
The articulation of strategic choices, which provides information on how an organization intends to achieve its priorities and associated results. Generally, a plan will explain the logic behind the strategies chosen and tend to focus on actions that lead to the expected result.

planned spending (dépenses prévues)
For Departmental Plans and Departmental Results Reports, planned spending refers to those amounts presented in Main Estimates.
A department is expected to be aware of the authorities that it has sought and received. The determination of planned spending is a departmental responsibility, and departments must be able to defend the expenditure and accrual numbers presented in their Departmental Plans and Departmental Results Reports.

program (programme)
Individual or groups of services, activities or combinations thereof that are managed together within the department and focus on a specific set of outputs, outcomes or service levels.

program inventory (répertoire des programmes)
Identifies all the department’s programs and describes how resources are organized to contribute to the department’s core responsibilities and results.

result (résultat)
A consequence attributed, in part, to an organization, policy, program or initiative. Results are not within the control of a single organization, policy, program or initiative; instead they are within the area of the organization’s influence.

Statutory expenditures (dépenses législatives)
Expenditures that Parliament has approved through legislation other than appropriation acts. The legislation sets out the purpose of the expenditures and the terms and conditions under which they may be made.

target (cible)
A measurable performance or success level that an organization, program or initiative plans to achieve within a specified time period. Targets can be either quantitative or qualitative.

voted expenditures (dépenses votées)

Expenditures that Parliament approves annually through an appropriation act. The vote wording becomes the governing conditions under which these expenditures may be made. ​