IRCC stopped assigning immigration applications to inactive officers' IDs after CBC report

In the wake of a CBC investigation that revealed thousands of immigration applications had been assigned to hundreds of former employees' IDs and placeholder codes, the federal government conducted a major review and cleaned up its global application system to ensure none had been «forgotten,» CBC News has learned.

Now, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) tells CBC News it has ended the longstanding practice of using inactive officers' IDs as virtual holding bins for applications to ensure «files do not fall through the cracks.»

On Dec. 12, 2022, CBC first reported that IRCC was assigning tens of thousands of applications to «inactive users» in its Global Case Management System (GCMS), used to process citizenship and immigration applications.

Data showed that in February that year, 59,456 «open, pending or re-opened» applications had been assigned to 779 codes representing a mix of placeholders and former employees, some of whom last logged in and processed files more than a decade ago.

After initially failing to provide CBC with a response by deadline, IRCC explained after the story published that it repurposed codes belonging to inactive users as a method of organizing and holding applications for the next stage of processing. IRCC also said the data obtained by CBC provided only a brief snapshot of a complex system.

New details come to light

Nearly two years after that story was published, and a year and a half after CBC requested documents, IRCC finally released an access to information request containing more details.

Despite officials denying at the time that the applications were ever in «limbo,» emails obtained by CBC show some applications tied to departed employees were reassigned to active employees