The Backlog: Barbara's Achilles Heel?

Abstract

Barbara McDougall, our Minister of Employment and Immigration, has managed a brilliant balancing ad. She has raised the immigration plan to 250,000 per year without arousing a massive backlash. She has refused to introduce the draconian and unworkable provision for turning back refugee claimants amving from countries where they sojourned for more than 48 hours and where they theoretically could have made a refugee claim. The new refugee determination system is sputtering along in spite of the slow pace of reform, many inexperienced refugee lawyers and the large number of claimants. Is Barbara's Achilles heel the backlog, those refugee claims dating back two and more years prior to the introduction of the new system? The Interchurch Committee claimed, in its brief to the United Nations Committee on Human Rights, that there are 101,853 cases in the backlog and 122,223 affected individuals, though the department operates on the assumption, for planning purposes, that there are still only 85,000 cases because that is the number for which the department was funded. The irony may be that, in fact, the latter is close to the correct figure because of poor departmental record keeping double counting, including old files in the estimates, etc. We will use theestimate of 85,000 cases. On December 28, 1988, Barbara announced that she was launching a two year plan to clear up the refugee claims backlog through a case-bycase hearing system to determine which claimants were credible or had humanitarian and compassionate grounds to be allowed to remain. The backlog was supposed to have been cleared up by the end of December 1990. As of the end of October 1990, there are still 58,432 undecided cases. By September of 1991, the revised deadline for clearing up the backlog, will the task be done? To the end of October 31,1990, only 167 individuals have actually been Howard Adelman