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Minister will get more power in picking adjudicators for immigration body
They are in some ways the gatekeepers to Canada, deciding which refugee applicants get to stay and who must return to an uncertain future in their homelands.
In some cases, the decisions made by the adjudicators on the Immigration and Refugee Board could mean life or death for the people involved.
Now, the Conservative government is changing the way those adjudicators are appointed, putting more power over the selection in the hands of Immigration Minister Diane Finley.
Immigration experts fear the coming reforms will not only politicize the independent, quasi-judicial board but lead to a more worrisome outcome: an anti- refugee ideology that might close Canada’s doors to refugees.
Toronto Star March 3, 2007

It’s reasonable “to fear that the selection of members will not only simply be friends of the party but based on ideological grounds,” said Peter Showler, a former chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board.
Conservatives have not traditionally been strong advocates of refugee issues, he said.
“It’s unfair to say xenophobic. But certainly they’ve been more restrictive in their view of the refugee flow,” Showler said.
“I’m very fearful for the board right now.”
Since its creation in 1989, the Immigration and Refugee Board has been plagued by accusations that its adjudicators were appointed based on who they knew rather than what they knew. That’s what prompted then immigration minister Judy Sgro to reform the process in 2004 so that “merit, skill and competence” became the main criteria for people hoping to become adjudicators.
Since then, applicants have been vetted by an independent advisory committee of lawyers, academics, representatives from immigration groups and human resources experts. From there, candidates were reviewed by a selection board, made up of experts in the workings of the Immigration and Refugee Board itself. At the end, the minister names adjudicators who have passed both hurdles.
The reforms were seen as a key step to raising the professionalism of the board. Those involved say it was making a difference.
“It has worked. It has done what it is supposed to do,” said Nick Summers, a refugee lawyer who was a member of the advisory panel that vetted candidates. “People who have been through our system have proved to be stronger board members, better able to handle cases.”
But now a government report is recommending a greater voice for the minister in the process of picking adjudicators. Under pending reforms, there will be one screening panel with members selected by both Finley and the IRB chair.
The report, from the Public Appointments Commission, praises the IRB as “one of the fairest, most professional and comprehensive refugee determination systems.”
It acknowledges that in recent years the board has been “significantly professionalized.” Yet despite that progress, it says the minister should have more say in choosing the panel responsible for screening applicants.
“The minister’s views should be considered,” it reads.
Ironically, that was intended by Sgro’s changes but in reality, it was the IRB chair who picked the advisory panel.
Now, with the prospect of a more active political hand in the process, the fallout has begun.
IRB chair Jean-Guy Fleury, a respected lifelong civil servant, tendered his resignation just before the release of the report recommending the changes.
This week, five members of the existing advisory panel resigned en masse to signal their own protest of the new direction.
“We couldn’t be part of it any more,” Summers said. “What is to stop patronage then? The whole purpose of having this community screening board was to get it non-partisan.”
Still, Summers says he’s not surprised, saying he saw warning signs last year when the Conservatives began “monkeying” with the appointments.
First, qualified, experienced adjudicators weren’t being reappointed because they had been first appointed by the Liberals, Summers said.
Then other potential candidates screened by the selection committee were bypassed “simply because they had been through the system during the time the Liberal were in power.”
This, even though 52 of the 156 adjudicator positions are vacant and the lack of decision-makers is causing backlogs.
“That may be the goal,” Summers said. “They may want to destroy the IRB. It’s never been a favourite of the right wing. I hope I’m wrong.”
With vacancies in the chair’s post, deputy chair and for one-third of the adjudicators, decisions on who gets those jobs could affect refugee policy for years to come.
“The appointment of all those … if they do it based on ideology, they could essentially eviscerate the board,” Showler said.
A call to Finley’s office seeking her comment was not returned this week. However, she defended the changes this week.
“The independent review concluded that there was significant opportunity for improvement. That’s why we’re doing this, to make the process more open, more transparent, more accountable,” Finley said.
“It’s a balanced approach that will take into account all the different perspectives,” she said.