MONTREAL — When Kabanga Gaspard applied for a visa for his Congolese wife last January, he thought she would be living with him within a year.

At the time, the processing time for family class applications through Canada's visa office in Nairobi ranged from six to 11 months.

But when Gaspard, an accountant with the provincial government in Yellowknife, checked the wait times again in March, delays had spiked from 11 to 23 months.

"My wife will wait another one year, two years before coming home," he told The Canadian Press.

According to a report released by the Canadian Council for Refugees on Monday, Gaspard's experience is not unique.

The office in the Kenyan capital, which serves some of the most vulnerable refugee populations in the world, is severely bogged down by extended processing delays.

Refugee and immigration claims at the service centre creep through the system at a snail's pace. One in five cases takes 35 months the report says.

Some family reunification cases linger for five years, waiting for hearings, appeals and final decisions -- often bouncing back-and-forth between countries.

It's part of a system even Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has deemed "broken."

But the report suggests the Nairobi office, which serves 18 countries in eastern and central Africa -- including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Somalia -- has some of the slowest processing times of all Canadian visa offices.

According to the report, half the cases for the dependants of refugees take more than 23 months to process in Nairobi compared with 14 months globally. Privately sponsored refugees can wait more than 42 months compared with 19 months globally.

Pending cases are also disproportionately represented in the Kenya-based office.

They account for 24 per cent of unsettled cases involving dependants of refugees worldwide and 30 per cent of pending privately sponsored refugee cases.

And wait times are only getting longer.

Since 2006, processing times at the Nairobi office for family class applications for spouses and partners increased 92 per cent --from 13 months to 25 months -- and 73 per cent for dependant children-- from 19 months to 33.

Gaspard doesn't understand why services for some of the world's poorest countries are centralized in Nairobi.

"I think they're neglecting the region," he said.

But Kenney's spokesman, Alykhan Velshi, says the Nairobi office is fully staffed and doing its best in a challenging territory.

"The processing times aren't because of a lack of manpower but because of the sheer difficulty of operating in the region," he wrote in an email to The Canadian Press.

He notes poor communications systems and non-existent or crumbling infrastructure often hamper the application process. Conducting interviews in remote rural regions and the dangers of travelling in some of the countries also slow the work.

The bureau also has a higher than average rate of no-shows for interviews.

"In some cases, in order to get to a particular country you have to go through three airports," he wrote.

"In some cases you cannot use the mail or courier services, because they don't exist. In many countries it's unlawful to use the mail to transfer passports over international borders."

Immigration Canada sent extra staff to the region between 2006 and 2008, but civil unrest in Kenya created a backlog and resulted in the cancellation of two temporary positions for workers slated to conduct refugee interviews.

Six more staff were sent to Nairobi in 2008 to help chip away at the accumulated cases.

Velshi also says the work is hobbled by elevated incidences of immigration fraud.

"It is extremely time-consuming to process refugee applications in that part of the world and to ensure we're not allowing our refugee system to be abused by human smugglers," he said.

But Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis, who's been studying wait times in Canadian visa offices in Africa and the Caribbean, says problems aren't limited to the Nairobi office.

"What's changed in Jamaica, what's changed in Accra, what's changed in Kingston?" he said.

Government statistics suggest processing times for family reunification claims in Africa and the Caribbean are longer than in other regions and have increased almost across the board.

"The minister has to decide where his staff goes," he said. "The numbers tell the story."

And while he admits there are difficulties related to operating in those regions, he says they don't fully explain the lengthening processing times.

"Has fraud gone up since 2006?" he said. "Or have we just discovered it?"

Still, Canada is seeking to streamline the refugee system.

The Conservative government is preparing legislation to help get rid of the massive backlog of 61,000 refugee claims and speed processing times.

Velshi noted the Tories have also increased targets for refugee resettlement, particularly among privately sponsored refugees and in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Gaspard, who came to Canada in 1997 from the Congo, makes a point of speaking to his wife on the phone every day. His relationship is strong enough to weather the distance, he says, but others may not be so lucky.

"Lots of people will see their marriage harmed because of these wait times," he said.

"What's happening in Nairobi has serious consequences."