The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada is cutting 53 jobs, placing further strain on an immigration system already at a breaking point.

IRB announced these cuts to its workforce on April 15 as part of their “Realignment and Reallocation Plan,” and most impacted workers are CEIU members.

These cuts are happening despite significant delays in refugee and asylum claim processing times, making a bad situation worse.

“These are not abstract delays—these are real people waiting in limbo for safety, stability, and justice,” said Rubina Boucher, National President of CEIU. “At a time when asylum and refugee claims are rising and backlogs are growing, the federal government is cutting the very workers responsible for processing these cases. You cannot fix a system in crisis by removing the people who keep it running.”

These latest cuts at IRB are happening as thousands of job cuts and departmental restructuring continues at IRCC, along with sweeping changes to immigration with measures like Bill C-12 and cuts to refugee health care.

These so-called ‘efficiencies’ are part of a broader pattern of job cuts and restructuring across the federal public service. What we are seeing at IRB and IRCC is not modernization, it is destabilization. It undermines due process, increases delays, and puts already vulnerable people at greater risk.

CEIU is communicating with IRB members affected by this announcement and continues to campaign against budget cuts that are impacting countless people.

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