2014-2015 Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada

Overall performance^{Footnote 1}

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC)^{Note de bas de page 2} showed a similar performance as the previous year despite an increase of 16.3% in requests received. This report provides comparative statistics for the last three periods (2012-2015).

Workload

IRCC received by far the highest number of requests (36,066) under the Access to Information Act (the Act), representing 50.0% of total requests received across government in 2014-2015. It is also an increase of 16.3% compared to the 29,281requests received in 2013-2014. The majority of requests were from the business sector (52.3%), followed by the public (36.5%).

IRCC completed 33,524 requests during this reporting period. The completion rate^{Note de bas de page 3} was 90.2%, which is higher than the government-wide rate, which was 85.1%. In 2013-2014, the completion rate for IRCC was 89.8%. IRCC also received 899 informal requests in 2014-2015 and 43.8% of these were completed within 30 days. The number of consultations received by IRCC from other federal government institutions increased from 178 to 222, an increase of 24.7%.

In 2014-2015, IRCC processed 1,615,772 pages, representing an increase of 30.2% in comparison to the previous period. The average number of pages processed per completed request increased marginally from 48 in 2013-2014 to 50 in 2014-2015.

The information released by IRCC was mostly in electronic format: 29,164 requests in electronic format and 979 requests in paper format. This represents a significant reduction of 48.6% in the number of requests disclosed in paper format compared to the previous year where they had 1,906.

Table 1. Workload

Request completion time

Timeliness

Figure 1 reveals that 69.3% of requests were completed within 30 days or less, which is higher than the results observed in 2013-2014 (67.2%). The percentage of requests completed between 61 and 120 days decreased by 3.7% from the previous period.

Figure 1: Request Completion Time

Extensions

IRCC took a total of 1,465 extensions in 2014-2015 compared to 1,531 in 2013-2014. The most common reason for taking an extension was interference with operations, for which 60.3% of the total extensions were claimed, followed by 37.7% for consultations, and 2.0% for third-party notice.

Figure 2 shows that 19.6% of the extensions taken in 2014-2015 were for 30 days or less, which is higher than the previous year. However, when compared to 2012-2013, the proportion of extensions taken for less than 30 days dropped significantly in 2013-2014. The proportion of extensions of 31 to 60 days decreased from 86.4% in 2013-2014 to 60.7% in 2014-2015.

Figure 2: Length of Extensions

Deemed refusals

In 2014-2015, the number of requests closed past the statutory deadline was 3,706, which accounts for 11.1% of all completed requests. This rate represents a “C” grade.^{Note de bas de page 4} Workload was invoked as the principal reason for overdue requests (for 97.9% of requests closed past the statutory federal deadline).

Figure 3 shows that 59.4% of overdue requests were late by 15 days or less, 8.6% of requests were late between 16 and 30 days and 8.9% were late between 61 and 120 days. 2.9% of overdue requests took more than 365 days to complete. In 2013-2014, 53.3% of overdue requests were responded within 15 days.

Figure 3: Lateness of Overdue Requests

Disclosure

Percentage of requests for which information was disclosed

In 2014-2015, 30.8% of completed requests were entirely disclosed. This is lower than the previous period’s rate of full disclosure (33.4%) (see Figure 4). The rate for partially disclosed requests was 62.9% in 2014-2015 and 5.6% of requests were abandoned, representing 1,893 requests.

Figure 4: Level of Disclosure

Exemptions

The average number of exemptions used per completed request increased slightly from 0.81 in 2013-2014 to 0.89 in 2014-2015 (see Table 2). The most used exemptions in 2014-2015 were section 19 (Personal Information) (48.6%), and section 15 (International Affairs and Defence) (29.8%), followed by section 16 (Law Enforcement and Investigations) (14.2%).

Table 2: Exemptions

Complaints at the OIC

The number of complaints received by the OIC^{Note de bas de page 5} in 2014-2015 against IRCC was 246, which is less compared to the 305 complaints received by our office in 2013-2014. Around 45% of complaints were refusals. Almost 51% of complaints received this reporting period were well-founded and resolved, while 14% were not well-founded. In addition, 26 complaints were discontinued and 31 were pending resolution.