Question Period Note: Inactive Officers

Cases assigned to inactive officers

We are committed to providing efficient and effective processing of applications to support the successful integration of newcomers into Canada.

Applicants can be assured that the 60,000 applications currently in queue for review are being processed. The codes in reference are used to differentiate between the various stages in application flow/review. They are means of inventory management, and clients can still expect to be contacted once a decision has been made.

It should be noted that IRCC has an integrated network of offices that share the workload as necessary. The processing of an application may involve more than one officer and applications and can be shifted from one processing centre to another to make processing as efficient as possible.

Applicants can be assured that their application is moving forward even if they have not received a specific update from IRCC.

If pressed:

We recognize that people are facing uncertainty as they wait for their applications to be finalized and are reviewing and processing the inventory of applications to fullest of the department’s capacity.

In some cases, when an officer leaves or becomes inactive, their previous user code will be used to compile similar applications and become a batch code or group reference number. This batch code is used to triage similar applications and aids in processing – they're no longer associated to an individual officer.

To maintain the integrity of our application process, user accounts are not deleted in our system once they have become inactive, even if several officers may have been implicated in the processing of an application. This enables us to maintain records of all of the activity that has ever taken place on a given application in our system.

• Clear and solid procedures exist for when an employee does not need an account in our processing system. Accounts are therefore de-activated upon request from an Access Security Coordinator (trusted source) when an employee is no longer using GCMS for various of reasons (left the department, extended leave, retirement etc.). The department also runs a program to deactivate accounts that haven’t been used in more than six months.
• The department has at times used the inactive codes from previous GCMS users (e.g., retirees) to perform inventory management. These codes are used to group applications based on the characteristics of the application to facilitate efficient processing.
• The time it takes to process an application varies according to a number of factors, such as the type of application being submitted; the completeness of the application submitted by clients, how well and how quickly applicants respond to requests from IRCC to provide additional information (including medical examinations); how easily IRCC can verify the information provided and the complexity of an application.

• We are continuing to set the bar higher for processing. Between January and November 2022, IRCC has processed 4.8 million final decisions for permanent residents, temporary residents (excluding Electronic Travel Authorizations), and citizenship compared to 2.5 million final decisions in the same period last year. We are on track to set a new record for study permit processing in 2022, with approximately 671,000 study permit applications processed between January 1 and November 30 so far, compared to about 504,000 processed over the same period last year. Thanks to these efforts, we are now processing most new study permit applications within our 60-day service standard.

• We are on track to reach our record-setting target of over 431,000 new permanent residence admissions in 2022, with approximately 414,000 new permanent residents already welcomed between January 1 and November 30 this year. Canada has also welcomed about 251,000 new Canadian citizens as of November 30 – already well surpassing our total number of new citizens for all of 2021.

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