IRCC aims to grant citizenship to 300,000 people this fiscal year

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IRCC aims to grant citizenship to 300,000 people
this fiscal year
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Memo shows citizenship targets for 2022 and makes
recommendations on processing applications. IRCC
memo that outlines targets for the number of new
citizens Canada will welcome for the 2022-2023
fiscal year. 
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• The memo, drafted by the Operations, Planning and
  Performance division of Immigration, Refugees and
  Citizenship Canada (IRCC) for a senior official,
  recommends that IRCC process a total of 285,000
  decisions and 300,000 new citizens by March 31,
  2023. A decision is a review of an application
  which is then approved, denied, or marked as
  incomplete. The citizenship target means that
  300,000 approved applicants must take the oath of
  citizenship, either in person or virtually. 

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• This is a significant increase over the 2021-2022
  fiscal year and even exceeds the pre-pandemic
  targets of 2019-2020, when 253,000 citizenship
  applications were processed. 
• In 2021-2022, IRCC succeeded in welcoming 217,000
  new citizens. So far in the 2022-2023 fiscal
  year, Canada has welcomed 116,000 new citizens
  and is well on track to hit target. By
  comparison, over the same period in 2021, Canada
  had only sworn in 35,000 people.

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IRCC moving away from paper applications 

• In March 2020, IRCC became unable to process most
  applications due to the onset of the COVID-19
  pandemic. This was because the department was
  only able to process paper applications that were
  mailed to a central location. As all in-person
  events were also cancelled, this meant that IRCC
  was unable to conduct interviews with candidates
  and there could not be any oath swearing at
  citizenship ceremonies.  
• These constraints led a shift towards making the
  citizenship application process entirely digital,
  for some applicants, beginning in November 2020.
  This has expanded to all those who apply who
  are over the age of 18.

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• The memo recommends that IRCC continue with its
  current system of first-in-first-out for all
  applications, meaning maintaining focus on older,
  paper applications while also making room to
  prioritize a small number of digital applications
  to prevent backlog growth.  
• In 2021, IRCC had a goal of 5,000 digital
  applications for the fiscal year out of a
  targeted 245,000 decisions. As a larger number of
  applications are now digital, the report says
  that for the 2022-2023 fiscal year, there will
  need to be an increase in the number of digital
  applications processed. 

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Processing times over 20 months 

• Processing times in a subsequent report published
  in May stood at 27 months. The memo says this is
  to be expected due to increased online
  applications in addition to the backlog of paper
  applications. As of last June, there were 413,000
  applications in the grant inventory.  
• IRCC says it has taken steps towards clearing the
  backlog, and processing 80 of all new
  applications within service standards. To do
  this, over 1,000 new staff have been hired and
  there are plans to expand access to the
  citizenship application status tracker to
  representatives. Additionally, minors under the
  age of 18 will be eligible to apply for
  citizenship online by the end of the year. 

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