The influx of migrants crossing the border has turned Canada’s asylum system into an assembly line, exacerbating operational problems and prioritizing targets over the needs of vulnerable people, say front-line staff at the country’s beleaguered refugee board.

Immigration and Refugee Board employees told the Star they are overworked and frustrated by organizational challenges.

They fear changes recently recommended in a government report could make things worse.

“To meet (management) targets, people stop being people and start becoming numbers,” said Crystal Warner, national executive vice-president of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union, which represents 550 of the board’s 1,000 employees.

“The morale is really low at the moment. There is (only) so much you can do when you don’t have enough resources to go around. And you hear recommendations from people who don’t know how you operate and miss the bigger, systemic and structural issues that need to get changed to solve our problems.”

Canada’s world-renowned asylum system is coping with a ballooning backlog: since 2016, the number of claims has increased by 241 per cent to 50,000 cases, due largely to an unexpected wave of migrants who have walked across the Canada-U.S. border.

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Each asylum judge is now expected to process 150 refugee claims a year. The union has been told that number will increase to 200 in 2019.

Despite Ottawa’s promise in the 2018 budget to hire 50 asylum judges and 185 support staff over the next two years, board staff and refugee advocates say that’s not enough to fix a flawed system.

A recent government report, which recommended ways to restructure, isn’t the answer either, they say.

Various federal departments and agencies share responsibility for the intake, adjudication and removal of refugees, for permanent residency approvals, and for all appeals, but it’s the refugee board, which operates as an independent, arm’s-length body, that grants asylum.

The report, by retired deputy immigration minister Neil Yeates, recommended government either establish a new Asylum System Management Board to co-ordinate and streamline the process or create a new Refugee Protection Agency, which would handle the entire asylum system from intake to adjudication, and would fall under the authority of the immigration minister.

“The Yeates Report proposes massive changes to the system,” said Chris Aylward, national president of Public Service Alliance of Canada, the bargaining agent for 18 federal unions, including that of the board.

“It should have focused on ensuring sufficient and proper resources go to the processing and review of asylum claims instead of proposing a new structure that could threaten the rights of claimants to a fair process.”

The concern, according to Warner, is that restructuring would threaten the independence and transparency of the refugee determination system from real or perceived political interference from Ottawa.

Warner said there have been problems at the refugee board since the late 2000s, when the government of Stephen Harper made massive changes to the system and was slow to appoint refugee judges.

“The changes (by the Conservatives) were too extreme; we went from a country that was welcoming to one that was hurry-up-and-leave,” said Warner, who worked as a registry support staffer at the refugee board in Vancouver for 10 years before being elected national executive vice-president of the union.

Among the major flaws of Harper’s reforms, Warner said, were:

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The elimination of tribunal officers who were charged with: the screening and triage of files; liaising with and answering inquiries from officials, claimants and lawyers; administering cases returned by courts, and providing hearing room support to decision-makers, who now must perform some of the duties on their own.

The imposition of statutory timelines to hear asylum claims within 60 days without taking into account the practicality of having a claimant secure a lawyer and legal aid, prepare a narrative, collect documents and evidence, and obtain medical and security clearances within the time frame.

Splitting the administration of the refugee protection tribunal from that of other board functions, which created a less flexible organizational structure unable to respond easily to changing operational needs.

“Cumulatively, such administrative tasks represent an astonishing burden, distraction and waste of adjudicator time and expertise,” said one refugee judge, who asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions. “Yet it is a deliberate construct that continues under the leadership of the board and remains a stark, systemic management failing.”

Compounding the structural problems are shuttered hearing rooms, antiquated dictation software and failed video conference equipment, all of which cause further delays, said Warner.

“Trying to book a hearing room can become World War III between all these divisions within the refugee board,” noted Warner, who added that board policy still requires paper, not electronic, files.

“We can’t receive refugee claimants’ files, documents from lawyers and minister’s counsel by email. They must be received via regular mail or fax. You can imagine in 2018, what a ridiculous thing this is. It prolongs everything on case management.”

While the policy goal is to process 90 per cent of claimants within regulated timelines, the refugee board has never met this target: last year, for example, only 59 per cent of the cases were completed on time.

The federal government said it is committed to an efficient, fair and orderly asylum system and will continue to uphold Canada’s proud humanitarian tradition while supporting the integrity of the asylum system.

“The findings in the Yeates report will inform our review of Canada’s asylum system as we determine how best to maximize efficiency while ensuring that the system remains fair and continues to be in line with international standards,” said Mathieu Genest, spokesperson for Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen.

“The immigration department is studying the recommendations and will be consulting stakeholders, and provincial and territorial partners, on the findings over the course of the summer.”

A veteran case manager at the refugee board said her colleagues are overwhelmed by the workload, but are committed to their jobs in offering asylum to those in need of Canada’s protection while maintaining the integrity of the country’s refugee system.

“We need to have more adjudicative support provided to the members. We need to move away from using metrics as a way of measuring productivity. We need enough hearing rooms. We need to allow people to leave work behind and not feel obligated to take their work home,” said the case manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to media.

“We need all of these things so that we can retain the compassion that we all have for the clients we serve.”