2012-2013 Citizenship and Immigration Canada

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) was created in 1994 to link citizenship and immigration services. In 2008, the department’s portfolio was expanded to include multiculturalism. CIC’s mandate includes, among other things, the selection and processing of foreign nationals as permanent and temporary residents, the development of Canada’s admissibility policy, and the setting of conditions for entering and remaining in Canada.

In 2012-13, CIC received 25,010 requests, by far the largest number of requests of all institutions (representing 45% of all requests). CIC’s strong performance in 2012-13 has had a positive impact on the overall government-wide statistics.

CIC completed 26,020 requests in 2012-13, 24.6% more than in the last reporting period. It ended the 2012-13 reporting period with 95.6% of all its requests completed. This completion rate is the highest achieved by CIC in the past 10 years. The average time to complete a request was 30 days.^{Footnote 1}

More than half of the requests received by CIC in 2012-13 came from businesses (59%), mostly consultants and lawyers requesting personal information files on behalf of their clients. These files did not involved processing a large volume of pages, as only 0.32% of the requests completed required processing more than 1,000 pages.

Table 1: Workload

Measures	Reporting period 2011-12	Reporting period 2012-13	Difference
Number of requests received	20,575	25,010	21.56%
Number of consultations received (from other government institutions)	192	188	-2.08%
Average number of pages processed per request closed	68	60	-8
% of requests for which more than 1,000 pages were processed	0.45%	0.32%	-0.13%
Note: The average number of pages processed per request closed and the percentage of requests for which more than 1,000 pages were processed are calculated from the total of requests completed for which the information was disclosed (in part or totally), exempted/excluded and for requests abandoned. It excludes requests completed for the following dispositions: no records exist, requests transferred and requests treated informally.

Timeliness

In terms of timeliness, CIC completed about 74.6% of requests in 30 days or less, an improvement from the previous reporting period.

6.6% of the requests completed were closed past the statutory deadline. This proportion represents a “B” grade.^{Footnote 2} Workload was identified as the principal reason for completing requests late (88% of the time).

Extensions

CIC took a total of 1,899 extensions. Most (83%) were taken under section 9(1)(a) (interference with operations). About 72% of extensions were for less than 30 days.

The number of extensions taken by CIC for a period of more than 30 days decreased from 1,871 in 2011-12 to 539 in 2012-13. This is also consistent with OIC statistics regarding notices of extensions under section 9(2).

Disclosure

Of the 26,020 requests completed, 24.5% were disclosed entirely (comparable to the previous year). A large number of pages processed were disclosed (84.2%).

Table 2: Performance

Measures	Reporting Period 2011-12	Reporting Period 2012-13	Difference
Completion of Requests
Completion rate	90.72%	95.57%	4.85%
Completion Time
% of requests closed within 30 days	52.94%	74.62%	21.68%
% of requests closed past statutory deadline	13.52%	6.61%	-6.91%
% of consultations from government institution closed within 30 days	71.35%	67.74%	-3.61%
% of extensions of 30 days or less	43.66%	71.62%	27.96%
Level of Disclosure
% of pages processed that were disclosed	84.72%	84.22%	-0.5%
% of requests closed for which the information was disclosed entirely	24.69%	24.52%	-0.17%
Note: The completion rate represents the number of requests completed divided by the total number of requests on hand, which includes the new requests received and the requests carried over from the previous reporting period.

Complaints

The number of complaints received against CIC went up significantly between 2011-12 and 2012-13, from 66 to 109 complaints.

About 41% of the complaints received in 2012-13 were considered not well-founded (compared to 8.7% in 2011-12). An additional 33% were well-founded and 12.8% were discontinued.

The majority of the complaints in 2012-13 were refusal complaints (78.2%).