A recent policy analysis outlines seven recommendations to strengthen public confidence in Canada’s immigration system: a unified security command structure, expanded biometrics, stronger human review of high-risk files, faster asylum processing, consistent removal enforcement, targeted use of detention, and updated legal definitions for modern security threats.
What Is a Unified Immigration Security Command Structure?
Right now, tracking a high-risk case as it moves through IRCC, CBSA, CSIS, the RCMP, and the Immigration and Refugee Board involves several agencies working in parallel rather than under one accountable lead. The recommendation here is not to add another layer of bureaucracy, but to designate clear operational ownership of high-risk cases from first application through to final removal or citizenship, paired with the stronger performance measurement, surge-capacity planning, and interdepartmental training that past program evaluations have already called for.
How Would Expanded Biometrics Close Identity Gaps?
Biometric checks, fingerprints and photos, already help confirm identity and flag known bad actors before they reach the border. IRCC’s own regulatory plans have proposed extending facial biometrics to visa-exempt eTA travellers, a group that currently faces a lighter identity-verification standard than visa applicants. Closing that gap, along with adding digital passport capture for eTA and temporary resident visa applications, would bring Canada’s identity checks closer in line with peer countries and improve the quality of the data screening relies on in the first place.
Why Do Asylum Processing and Removals Need Reform?
Two separate audits have already flagged the same structural problem from different angles. A 2019 review of the asylum system found that Canada’s refugee determination process struggled to respond to surges in claim volume, that backlogs grew as a result, and that better information-sharing between CBSA, IRCC, and the IRB was needed. A 2020 review of removals found that most people subject to an enforceable removal order were not removed as soon as possible, that roughly 50,000 such cases had accumulated, and that the whereabouts of about two-thirds of those individuals were unknown to the agency at the time.
Current figures show meaningful movement on removals, with 23,160 enforced in 2025 and 10,607 more by the end of June 2026, but a substantial inventory remains: 33,847 wanted cases and 40,827 removals still in progress. The case for faster asylum processing and more consistent removal enforcement is less about tightening the front door and more about making sure decisions, once made, are actually carried through.
What Would These Changes Mean for Genuine Applicants and Immigrants?
It is worth being direct about what this analysis is and is not arguing. None of the seven recommendations target the volume of legal immigration, and none narrow eligibility for genuine applicants. The focus is entirely on identity verification, case tracking, and enforcing decisions that have already been made under existing law, including the framework in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that already permits detention only where there are reasonable grounds tied to public danger, flight risk, or unresolved identity, with mandatory detention reviews built in.
A system that reliably screens and removes the small number of genuinely high-risk cases is also the system best positioned to keep public support behind a generous, welcoming immigration program for everyone else. That connection, between credible enforcement and sustained public confidence, is the throughline across all seven recommendations, and it is one worth watching as Parliament considers how to respond to the underlying audits.
Frequently Asked Questions
A unified security command structure, expanded biometrics for visa-exempt travellers, stronger human review of high-risk applications, faster asylum processing, consistent removal enforcement, targeted use of detention and alternatives to detention, and updated legal definitions for modern security threats.
No. The recommendations focus on screening, identity verification, and enforcement of existing decisions, not on reducing immigration targets or narrowing eligibility for genuine applicants.
It found that CBSA did not remove most people subject to enforceable removal orders as soon as possible, that around 50,000 enforceable cases had accumulated, and that the location of roughly two-thirds of those individuals was unknown.
CBSA enforced 23,160 removals in 2025 and 10,607 more by June 30, 2026, though a sizeable inventory of pending and wanted cases remains.
The Supreme Court held that section 34(1)(e) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act applies only to violent conduct connected to national security, not to ordinary violence unconnected to it, prompting calls for Parliament to define modern security threats more clearly.
The analysis frames them as the latter: strengthening screening and enforcement is presented as the basis for sustaining public confidence in a generous immigration system, not a step toward reducing it.
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