Five years of surging claims, growing backlogs, and escalating health and housing expenditures have exposed a serious failure of fiscal accountability.
Author: Sergio R. Karas
Canadians have a right to know what the country’s asylum system costs. Remarkably, after five years of unprecedented pressure, Ottawa still cannot provide a credible, consolidated answer.
The numbers that are available are sobering. Canada received approximately 25,100 asylum claims in 2021, 92,225 in 2022, 144,190 in 2023, 173,020 in 2024 and 114,535 in 2025—more than 549,000 claims over five years. These are claims received, not necessarily unique individuals, but they measure the workload governments must process and support.
By the end of 2025, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada had approximately 300,000 pending refugee protection claims, five times the 2021 inventory. About 65 per cent had already been in the system for more than a year. Intake has since fallen, and increased finalizations reduced the inventory to about 259,000 by August 2026—an overdue improvement, but still an extraordinary backlog.
Before discussing cost, an important distinction is necessary.
A refugee claimant is someone who asks for protection after reaching Canada or a Canadian port of entry and whose claim has not yet been finally determined. If the claim succeeds, that individual becomes a protected person and may apply for permanent residence. A resettled refugee, by contrast, is selected abroad and comes through a separate government-assisted or privately sponsored program.
These categories do not receive identical benefits.
In-Canada claimants may receive Interim Federal Health Program coverage, provincial social assistance, legal aid where available, schooling for children, shelter, and a fee-exempt work permit if they need employment to support themselves. However, they are generally not eligible for the federal Resettlement Assistance Program or federally funded settlement services while their claims remain undecided.
Protected persons become eligible for federally funded settlement services after a positive decision. Government-assisted refugees selected abroad may receive federal accommodation, food, clothing, and income support for up to one year. Privately sponsored refugees arrive as permanent residents and are normally supported financially by their sponsors rather than by Ottawa, although they may use government-funded settlement services.
That distinction matters because Resettlement Assistance Program payments to government-assisted refugees cannot honestly be cited as a cost of in-Canada asylum claims.
The clearest adjudication expense is the IRB. Its total actual spending rose from $244.8 million in 2020-21 to $352.9 million in 2024-25, an increase of about 44 per cent. Over those five fiscal years, total IRB spending was approximately $1.49 billion.
But even that figure requires caution. The IRB also conducts immigration appeals, admissibility hearings, and detention reviews. Its departmental reports do not provide a complete annual allocation of total overhead between the Refugee Protection Division, the Refugee Appeal Division, and its non-refugee work. In 2024-25, $273.3 million of the IRB’s $352.9-million total was attributed to its broad adjudication responsibility, which covers all four divisions—not refugee claims alone.
Health costs are more alarming. The Interim Federal Health Program covered 623,365 beneficiaries in 2024-25, including 440,537 asylum claimants, at a total program cost of $896.5 million—$306.1 million more than the previous year.
Parliamentary Budget Officer data show that IFHP health-service expenditures across all beneficiary categories rose from approximately $202 million in 2020-21 to $848 million in 2024-25. Adding the reported expenditure categories produces $2.27 billion over those five years. That total includes claimants, resettled refugees, and other eligible groups, so it is not a claimant-only figure.
The cost difference is nevertheless significant. The PBO found that average IFHP spending per asylum claimant was 80 per cent higher than spending for an in-Canada resettled-refugee beneficiary in 2024-25, largely because claimants remain covered much longer. Average claimant coverage had reached four years. Ottawa introduced co-payments for prescriptions and supplemental health services in May 2026, but physician, hospital, ambulance, and diagnostic services remain fully covered.
Housing provides another substantial bill. Between April 2020 and September 2025, Ottawa housed approximately 61,000 claimants in federally funded hotels at a total cost of about $1.2 billion. Those hotels closed by October 2025. Separately, federal transfers to provinces and municipalities under the Interim Housing Assistance Program had reached approximately $1.7 billion since 2017 by October 2025.
Toronto alone budgeted $250 million in 2024 for refugee claimant shelter costs, including claimants using both dedicated programs and the base shelter system. Much of such municipal spending has been reimbursed through federal transfers.
Legal aid presents a similar accounting problem. Immigration and refugee legal-aid expenditures reached approximately $85 million in 2023-24, up 42 per cent in one year. But the federal statistics include some immigration detention and removal matters as well as refugee proceedings, so they cannot be treated as a pure claimant total.
The honest conclusion is not that one definitive five-year price tag can be calculated from public accounts. It cannot. The data are fragmented across departments and governments, beneficiary categories overlap, and federal reimbursements are easily double-counted with provincial or municipal spending.
The defensible conclusion is that billions of dollars in measurable adjudication, health, accommodation, and legal costs have accumulated, while major provincial expenses for social assistance, education and health care remain unquantified.
Delay is itself a cost driver. The PBO estimates that one additional month of average asylum processing time could add as much as $72 million annually to IFHP costs in 2026-27. That is not an argument for cutting procedural fairness. It is an argument for making timely decisions an urgent fiscal priority.
Ottawa should now do four things: publish an annual claimant-only cost account that identifies transfers and prevents double counting; preserve enough IRB capacity to eliminate the actionable backlog while intake is declining; accelerate work permits so claimants able to work are not left dependent on shelters or social assistance; and enforce final negative decisions promptly once appeals and risk assessments are exhausted. The latter point is key: decisions should be fair but also final, and claimants who are not successful should be deported quickly.
Canada can meet its protection obligations without writing an open-ended cheque. But fiscal sustainability begins with honest categories, transparent accounts, and decisions made in months rather than years.
Sergio R. Karas, principal of Karas Immigration Law Professional Corporation, is a certified specialist in Canadian Citizenship and Immigration Law by the Law Society of Ontario, Division Chair of the ABA International Law Section, past chair of the Ontario Bar Association Citizenship and Immigration Section, past chair of the International Bar Association Immigration and Nationality Committee, and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.