Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), participated in the Canadian Parliament's Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration's new study on IRCC application backlogs and processing times on May 12, 2022.
Fraser stated that IRCC plans to return processing times to their normal levels for the bulk of business lines by the end of the year. By 2023, all processing standards are expected to be restored to normal.
By adding more personnel to its 11,000-person staff and modernizing the immigration system, IRCC aims to decrease wait times for applicants. According to Fraser, $827 million budget to digitize the current immigration system will transform Canada.
However, IRCC has already made 156,000 permanent residency applications in the first quarter of 2022 due to efforts to modernize. Additionally, $85 million of the IRCC's budget may be used to speed up processing for certain areas of business, such as the renewal of PR cards.
Daniel Mills, IRCC's Assistant Deputy Minister of Operations, said these PR card renewals were being processed in an average of 120 days in December, but by now it has been reduced to 65 days.