IRCC Minister Sean Fraser Provides Update on Immigration Backlogs

Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Sean Fraser, who is a member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ministerial task force, yesterday provided an update on IRCC’s efforts to reduce wait times and backlog.This task force was created on June 25, 2022 to help improve government services, with a focus on reducing delays around passport processing, immigration services, and at CanadianMinister Fraser outlined the following points on how Canada is trying to improve its immigration system and reduce application backlogs, with an emphasis on addressing labour shortages, improving client experiences, and reuniting families.

·    Hiring up to 1,250 extra personnel by the end of the fall to boost processing capacity and short-term address backlogs;

·    Modernising and simplifying our processes to increase the long-term sustainability of the Canadian system;

Welcoming more than 300,000 new         permanent residents by August 22, surpassing the milestone earlier than in any prior year;

·    349,000 new work permits were issued from January 1 to July 31 this year, compared to about 112,000 during the same time in 2021;

·    Finalising about 360,000 study permits between January 1 and July 31, 2022, vs roughly 306,000 for the same time in 2021;

·    Approving more than 216,000 requests for the Canada-Ukraine Authorisation for Emergency Travel for Ukrainians and family members seeking safety in Canada from March 17 to August 24, 2022;

·    Introducing application status trackers for citizenship and some types of permanent residents to provide timely information on their files; these will be made available to more customers in the upcoming year; and

·    Keeping Canadians informed of our efforts by posting monthly data on our website.