As part of a new strategy to enhance operations, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) made major changes last week. An earlier study on the department’s opportunity for improvement was written by Neil Yeates, a former deputy minister for the IRCC. To determine whether the department’s existing structure best enables it to carry out its mandate, IRCC commissioned Yeates to write a report. The most senior employee in a government department is the Deputy Minister. They perform a non-political function in which they supervise the administration of their division, including the application of plans and strategies as well as personnel and financial management. IRCC’s deputy minister at the moment, Christiane Fox, communicates with immigration minister Marc Miller, who also serves as the department’s minister. The mandate of the elected government is to be carried out by the Minister of Immigration.
IRCC changed its structure to a business-line model.
The department was reorganized over the following sectors last week, among other adjustments:-
- Strategic Policy
- Settlement Integration and Francophone Affairs
- Asylum and Refugees Resettlement
- Citizenship and Passport
- Service Delivery
- Migration Integrity
- Chief Financial Officer
- Chief Information Officer
- International Affairs and Crisis Response
- Economic, Family, and Social Migration
- Communications
- Corporate Services
- Client Service, Innovation, and Chief Digital Officer
According to it, the department is now set up across areas of business, as Yeates suggested. This means that IRCC staff members will be split among the numerous clients the department serves as well as among themselves in a fashion that will enable them to respond quickly to global changes. For instance, Fox told Wells that the department’s new International Affairs and Crisis Response sector has been created to help the IRCC in better planning for humanitarian disasters and developing a strategy. The IRCC regularly handles them, for instance, since last year with Ukraine and more recently with projects to resettle Afghan and Syrian refugees, to name a few.
Yeates: The IRCC’s organizational structure is weak:
Yeates writes in his review, a copy of which CIC News has obtained, that “the current organizational model at IRCC is broken but is being held together by the hard work and dedication of staff.” He indicates that “a series of steps need to be taken to realign the organizational structure (including a major shift to a business line-based structure), reform the governance system, implement stronger management systems (especially planning and reporting) and facilitate the development of a culture to better support the department’s goals and objectives (including consideration of an overall review of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and measures to better leverage the experience and expertise of diverse staff groups).”
Yeates explains that there are many reasons why IRCC’s current organizational structure has weaknesses, but he focuses on two in particular: first, a challenging operating environment in Canada and around the world; and second, IRCC’s explosive growth since the organization’s current structure was introduced more than 20 years ago. Yeates emphasizes this issue by pointing out that as of January 2023, there were 12,949 employees working for the IRCC, up from 5,352 in March 2013.
Operational environment of IRCC:
Yeates elaborates on the different factors affecting IRCC, with the following being the primary ones:
COVID-19 and the Hybrid Work Environment: As a result of the pandemic, it appears that the nature of work is changing permanently. As a result, more workers, including IRCC personnel, are working remotely with a general instruction to return to the office 2-3 days a week. Yeates notes that although working from home has been successful, it is still unclear how it will affect the organizational culture of the IRCC.
Demand for IRCC Services: According to the department’s service standards (the targets it sets for itself to process applications for each line of business), demand for IRCC’s programs frequently exceeds the department’s processing capability. Even while the IRCC has the tools and resources it needs to manage its inventory, like caps for specific programs, its stocks can expand very quickly whenever demand for its programs outpaces its processing capability.
Growth of IRCC:
IRCC’s workforce has increased along with the program’s demand. Yeates describes its workforce as “medium sized” in 2013, with 5,217 non-executive employees; by 2023, that number will have more than doubled to 12,721 employees. The number of executives in the department has increased from 135 to 227 since 2013. The organizational structure at IRCC, which was created for a smaller department, has essentially remained the same despite the program and staff expansion.
Review of Immigration Policy:
The real effects of immigration are not typically well documented, and the prevailing immigration narrative in Canada has not typically been contested. As a result, IRCC may find that reviewing its immigration policies will help it determine the future course of the department. Such adjustments are usually difficult, especially at a company like IRCC that has many important obligations. IRCC has received significant money for its modernization of its digital platform. The IRCC must, however, transition to a fully digital organization.
Key points of Yeates’ suggestions:
Yeates offers advice in four different areas: organizational structure, governance, management systems, and culture. The following are some of the recommendations’ highlights:
- Recommended Organizational Structure:
- IRCC switch to a business line structure
- IRCC creates crisis and emergency management procedures that specify Assistant Deputy Minister leads in different circumstances
Governance Suggestions
- The Corporate Finance Committee’s responsibilities for finances and corporate services are transferred to the Executive Committee.
- The duties of the Issues Management Committee shall be transferred to a new Operations Committee to be led by the Deputy Minister’s Office.
These committees’ membership reduced to no more than 12 members and that it is reviewed as part of the reorganization process. In order to rationalize and streamline roles and accountabilities, a review of the division of duties between IRCC and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) under IRPA should be done.
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