the CanadaVisa Team - 22 July, 2015
Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Canada Minister Jason Kenney said that the Conservative government is open to creating a refugee appeal board, and that he wants to work with the opposition parties to develop a new model that will alleviate the backlog in the processing of refugee claims.
Currently, the Federal Court is responsible for hearing appeals from refugee claimants on their cases. They may appeal decisions at every step of the application process, which sometimes results in delays of several years in the finalizing of their cases.
Two opposition parties, the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Quebecois Party have been pushing for the creation of a refugee appeal board; something they say will automatically reduce cases that the Federal Court would have to hear.
Kenney said that he is hopeful that the parties can come together to agree on a model for a streamlined system.
"I'm hopeful that reasonable people from across the political spectrum can actually settle on a consensus, on a model of refugee reform that completely respects our charter obligations and our international obligations to protect persecuted persons, while reducing dramatically the abuse of our system," Kenney said.
Kenney said that this kind of appeal board would only work under a reformed refugee intake process.
According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, there was an increase of 30 per cent in the number of asylum claims in Canada last year alone, and that number continues to rise. In 2008, there were 65,000 refugee claims that were awaiting finalization in the system, compared to 23,000 in 2006.
Kenney said that the volume of claims that turn out to be false plays a large part in the current backlog of claims awaiting resolution.
"It's now taking us sometimes years to see a false asylum claim through to its completion," said Kenney. "That's not acceptable. It's creating huge backlogs and waiting times that's unfair to real victims of persecution."
