In a recent interview with CIC News, Minister Sean Fraser stated, "We're on track right now to restore our pre-pandemic service standard by the end of this calendar year for practically every line of business."

According to Canada's Minister of Immigration, Sean Fraser, significant initiatives are being taken to improve the immigration system.

When Fraser sat down with CIC News for an exclusive interview in Toronto earlier this week, he recognized continued application processing and client experience difficulties.

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The COVID-19 flare-up led to two significant issues for our migration framework. A large number of our workplaces all over the planet were shut thus... We encountered a huge loss of departmental torque.

He added that the second method was for Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to change its focus from allowing foreigners to join the country to converting individuals who were already living there into permanent residents. This was taking place as fresh applications kept coming in, causing inventory to build up. Following the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, Canada pledged to resettle 40,000 Afghan refugees, and since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Canada has been working to support those affected.

I can now clearly see the end of the tunnel, which is good news.

We're currently on target to return practically every business line to its pre-pandemic service standard by the end of this year.

As a result of the inventory expanding dramatically at the beginning of the epidemic, when in-person citizenship ceremonies were not a possibility, Minister Fraser added the warning that the service standard for Canadian citizenship applications may continue to lag a little.

Fraser offers three ways to enhance customer service and deal with backlogs.

The minister cites "resources, policy, and tech" as the three ways to enhance the immigration system.

"On the staffing front, we've recruited an additional 500 individuals." He likewise underscored the new government spending plan declarations' portions of an extra $85 million and another $385 million, the two of which will be utilized to upgrade application handling.

According to Fraser, Canada will require even greater immigration rates to accommodate the rising demand for permanent status.

"Our Immigration Levels Plan is our top priority. If we don't increase the numbers, we won't be able to reduce the inventory's case count.

Fraser revealed in February that starting this year, Canada will receive nearly 430,000 immigrants yearly, by far the biggest numbers ever recorded in Canadian history. By the time he releases the Immigration Levels Plan 2023–2025 on November 1 of this year, Canada's targets might have increased once again.

The minister stated that "digital platform modernization is going to considerably boost the dependability and pace of our system" in reference to the third alternative, technology.

"These actions are beginning to work...

A few weeks ago, we reached 200,000 permanently residing individuals in Canada. The minister underlined that the previous record had been surpassed by 1.5 months.

"Contrasted with last year, the quantity of work licenses has flooded over 250%."

During the epidemic, the IRCC's backlog increased to 2.4 million people, and the department has struggled to meet its own goals for how long it wants to take to process applications. It has made significant announcements and improvements since the beginning of the year in an effort to shorten processing times, clear up the backlog, and provide more assurance to its clients. Minister Fraser summarized IRCC's processing objectives, including the efforts being taken to improve staff capacity and modernize its processes and technology, at a press conference held in late January.

The backlog for Express Entry has been reduced, which has been one of the advantages. The minister informed CIC News that the resumption of all-program Express Entry draws is anticipated for July 6. Additionally, starting in July, IRCC hopes to return to the level of service it had before the pandemic by processing Express Entry applications.

The fact that IRCC has developed and is introducing more case trackers to let applicants check the progress of their files is an additional benefit. By the end of this summer, 17 business lines, according to the minister, will have case trackers that will let applicants check on their progress online.

The minister told CIC News that despite the difficulties, he was very optimistic.

By the end of this year, new applications will likely have the kind of assurance that we'll be able to achieve our service level, and consumers will be dealing with 60 days, 6 months, or 12 months, not an ambiguous amount of time.