Permanent residency backlog persists despite progress, AG report says

A new report from the auditor general of Canada released Thursday warns that while progress has been made, the federal government must improve its management ofimmigration programs to reduce permanent residency backlogs.

Auditor General Karen Hogan's report also said the federal government doesn't know whether it is making progress on reducing barriers and inequities for minorities, and must speed up effortsto modernize the delivery ofemployment insurance, Old Age Security and the Canada Pension Plan to avoid a major outage.

"These issues are not new," Hogan said in Ottawa Thursday. "If COVID-19 taught us anything, it is that being prepared and acting early costs less and results in better outcomes."

Hogan's office audited eight permanent residency programs and found that, despite efforts to reduce pandemic backlogs, most people applying for permanent residency are still waiting a long time for their applications to be processed.

The eight programs examined by Hogan's office fall intothree classes: refugee and humanitarian, economic, and family. While processing times improved for the economic and family classes, they worsened for refugees.

"At the end of 2022, about 99,000 refugees were still waiting for a decision on their application, and in the current processing environment, many will be waiting years," Hogan said in a media statement.

The report says that most privately sponsored refugees waited about 30 months for a decision on their application. Only five per cent of refugees in this class had their applications processed within Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada's (IRCC) 12-monthtimeline.

Most people applying under the Government-Assisted Refugee Program waited 26 months. Only 26 per cent of refugees in this stream saw their applications processed in 12 months.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller welcomed the report and said he would address the issues it raised. He saidthatHogan's reportrevealed "a lot of challenges."

"I expect excellence from my department and this is not an excellent report," Miller said. "While I am glad that the auditor general did trace a portrait of progress in a number of the areas,in one of the more vulnerable areas I am very concerned that the processing time are still lagging."

Delayed processing times

Hogan's report said the backlogs remainhigh for a number of reasons, including the department's decision to process newer applications ahead of older ones already in the queue.

Hogan said that short-term government priorities, such as coping with the Syrian refugee crisis, led to newerapplications being prioritized over those already in the system.

The audit also found that IRCC assigned workloads to offices without first determining if they had the resources to do the work.

While the IRCC introduced digital portals to speed up application processing times for family economic and class programs, it did not do so for the refugee program. The portals remain unavailable to most people applying for refugee programs, forcing them to submit their applications through email.

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Government shouldn't need a crisis to act promptly, AG says

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Karen Hogan, auditor general of Canada, says that if the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it's 'that being prepared and acting early costs less, and results in better outcomes.'

Hogan said that IRCC needs to understand why it has backlogs, ensure the tools it uses are working to reduce them and distribute resources properly to meet demand.

"I acknowledge that there are things outside the department's control when it comes to certain conditions in a country or access to critical documents, but what we found was that most of the delays were really being caused by inefficient management practices around applications and managing the inventory," Hogan said.

"It's real that there's a backlogof inventory that at times is greater than the immigration level for a given year, but the department has the ability to improvehow they process applications [and] also to be more transparent with applicants about what their wait time might actually be."

Delivering EI, CPP and OAS

The report also found that the information technology systems used to support the delivery ofemployment insurance, Old Age Security and the Canada Pension Plan are "decades-old and at risk of failing."

The report said the Liberal government's plan to modernize the delivery of these benefits has been delayed, putting the delivery of these benefits at risk.

The delivery system for OAS was supposed to be implemented this year, but that has been pushed to 2024and could be pushed to 2025, the report said.

These delays increase the risk of a "major outage that could disrupt the delivery of benefit payments," the report said.

"While Employment and Social Development Canada's decision to focus first on migrating the systems rightly prioritizes the continuity of benefits, I am concerned that if challenges and delays continue, decisions could be made to remove aspects of transformation or take shortcuts to maintain the timelines or budget, as happened with the Phoenix pay system," said Ms. Hogan.

The auditor general's report also looked at how successful federal government has been inreducing barriers and inequities in the workplace for racialized employees, and concluded that none of the existing barriers were fully removed.

The report audited six agencies and departments responsible for safety, justice and policing, includingthe Canada Border Services Agency, the Correctional Service of Canada, the Department of Justice, the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, Public Safety Canada and the RCMP.

It found that while a number of initiatives have been introduced to reduce barriers, they weren't tracked or measured to determine how well they're working.

"As a result, the six organizations did not know whether their actions had made or would make a difference in the work lives of racialized employees," the report said.

Dominic LeBlanc, the minister of democratic institutions, saidThursdaythat Canada is a diverse country and its public service should reflect that.

"The auditor general's report points out that there is more work to be done, particularly with the use of data to track our progress. We agree and accept that assessment," he said."Over the coming months, our government will work to address and implement those recommendations."

Government IT systems andantimicrobial resistance

The IT systems for EI, CPP and OAS were not the only outdated technology platformsthreatening service delivery that Hogan identified in her audit.

Her report said only 38 per cent of the federal government's roughly 7,500 information technology systems were considered to be "healthy."

About one third of nearly 1,500 applications critical to thehealth, safety, security and economic well-being of Canadianswere found to be in "poor health," the report said.

Hogan's audit also said that because departments and agencies have not been providing the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat with sufficient information about the health of their IT systems, the situation could be much worse.

"It has been more than 24 years since the government first identified aging systems as a significant issue, and the TBS still does not have a strategy to drive modernization," the report said.

"Aging systems are currently being maintained on old and outdated infrastructure, which is costly, resource intensive, and unsustainable."

Anita Anand, the president of the Treasury Board, told reporters Thursday that updating government IT systems is complicated and requires oversight but her department is pushing forward as fast as it can.

"We thank the auditor general for her review and recommendations," she said."We know that we have more work to do on system modernization and we committed to delivering high-quality services to Canadians as we undergo this transformation."

The report also found that the federal government isn't doing enough to address a growing resistance to antibiotics threatening the health of Canadians.

The audit said this is significant because in 2018, about a quarter of infections in Canada did not respond to "first-line antimicrobials," leading to 5,400 deaths. By 2050, that is likely to increase to 40 per cent and almost 14,000 deaths, the report said.