Evidence of meeting #52 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A video is available from Parliament.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
[Inaudible—Editor]...she would get the floor had she not said a point of order.
On the same point of order, Madam Chair, just to facilitate what Ms. James is trying to do—
3:45 p.m.
NDP
The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims) NDP Jinny Sims
Mr. Lamoureux, I've got to first.... I'm trying to think through the rules of order here.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
I'm just trying to help out on the same point of order, if I can provide comment on it. I believe if you check with the clerk, I can do that.
3:45 p.m.
NDP
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
A point of order is debatable. I believe the floor was recognized as a point of order, so I should be able to address the point of order.
3:45 p.m.
NDP
The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims) NDP Jinny Sims
She moved a point of order, but then she actually moved a motion, and we're now dealing with the motion.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
A person does not move a point of order. A person stands on a point of order, and after the point of order is dealt with, then the person can move a motion.
All I was going to suggest—
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
All I'm going to suggest is that I will conclude my comments, and maybe you can make a ruling on the point of order not being a point of order, and then Ms. James can move her motion.
3:45 p.m.
NDP
3:45 p.m.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
Thank you.
I actually wanted to go in camera, but at this point in time I would really like to hear from the witnesses, as opposed to from my colleague talking about a bunch of other things that may have come before committee before, or that may be dealt with elsewhere, and not in this particular session that we're studying.
3:45 p.m.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
So I prefer that we just move ahead with this particular witness.
3:45 p.m.
NDP
The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims) NDP Jinny Sims
Okay. That's what we're going to do right now. We're going to move on with hearing from the witnesses.
You have 10 minutes each, and we will start off with Benjamin Muller.
3:45 p.m.
Dr. Benjamin Muller Professor of Political Science, King's University College at Western University, As an Individual
All right.
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Throughout the world, biometric technologies are used in border security to varying degrees. A panoply of machine-readable travel documents are increasingly prevalent, particularly among so-called trusted or registered traveller programs, as well as in permanent resident, green card, and visa schemes.
Even in these cases, serious questions regarding the continued potential insecurity of breeder documents tend to be ignored, and the dangerous consequences of social sorting are deliberately avoided. Social sorting refers to the manner in which increasing amounts of digital information on individuals begin to create a so-called data double, which, although desirable to marketers and law enforcement, has shown to be less effective in predicting risk and more effective in predicting your next purchase on Amazon.
Still, some jurisdictions have taken biometrics to a much higher level, such as the development at the University of Arizona of AVATAR—the automated virtual agent for truth assessments in real time—which is effectively something the size of an ATM machine and replaces a border agent, using artificial intelligence and biometrics to carry out a typical initial inspection.
In all these cases, there are significant questions that remain unanswered and relatively unexplored about biometrics.
Using these technologies as well as various other forms of surveillance have significant problems in terms of public buy-in. Certainly part of the problem is the lack of public participation in the process and the adoption of these technologies. It is often unclear why particular biometric technologies are adopted: what makes a specific biometric technology apt for a particular problem?
Like many tools, they oversimplify complex political, social, and legal networks according to a new classification of biometrically enrolled subjects.
There is what Joseph Pugliese refers to as “infrastructural diffusion”, where certain norms of gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic status are bred into the technologies themselves. A prime example would be the failure of facial recognition biometrics on African Americans tested at Miami-Dade airport.
The development and application of biometric technologies tends not to focus simply on helping to resolve with greater certainty “who” you are, but, with the increasing interconnection with other pieces of personal digital data, determines “what” you are. Are we aware and comfortable with the way in which this transforms our manage of the border and the mobile subjects who intend to cross it?
Beyond deeply important ethical, political, and social issues, there are straightforward problems with biometric technologies that deserve consideration.
A recent study at the University of Notre Dame, published in Nature magazine, found that the so-called false-match rate increased 153% over three years.
A five-year study released in September by the National Research Council in Washington, D.C., labelled biometrics as “inherently fallible”: they only provide probabilistic results and not yes and no answers.
We are in dire need of increased research on the biological underpinnings of human distinctiveness. How stable the actual physiological characteristics are that the technology is designed to measure remains in serious question.
The AVATAR program, which is now being tested along the Arizona-Mexico border, biometrically measures 15 of 500 possible cues, which is lower than the 5% threshold set by the developers themselves. Happily for them, politicians are more excited about the gadgets than reflecting on the science they themselves have laid out.
There are some important questions we need to ask. What precisely do we expect these technologies to solve? What are the specific problems we believe they will address? Is the government willing to invest in public and intellectual engagement to consider seriously the specific efficacy, efficiency, and inherent problems associated with the use of these technologies? The research demonstrates that the industry is not compelled to do so on its own.
In conclusion, first, the signing of the Beyond the Border agreement already puts into policy what Nick Vaughan-Williams has referred to as the border not being “where it is supposed to be”. It is clear that this agreement will compel Canada to engage on a variety of bilateral fronts on the management and enforcement of mobility and circulation, but the extent to which this has occurred with little significant public consultation, and to what extent it requires the total adoption of these specific biometric technologies, may still be something that is salvageable.
Two, the increased reliance on biometric technologies together with other forms of digital surveillance move us away from a question of who the person is to what kind of person this is. This significantly alters how the border operates.
Three, the United States and Europe have multiple skilled and effective independent and non-governmental institutions devoted to evaluating border security—the practices, strategies, and technologies to be applied therein.
Canada has none.
The absence of this capacity will do little to enable policy innovation, effectively evaluate the efficacy and efficiency of strategies to secure the border and enhance mobility, or move us away from being little more than reactive to the foreign innovations of other policies.
Thank you.
3:50 p.m.
NDP
The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims) NDP Jinny Sims
Thank you very much.
We'll move straight over to you, Dr. Tyndall.
3:50 p.m.
Dr. Mark Tyndall Professor, University of Ottawa, and Head, Division of Infectious Diseases, Ottawa Hospital, As an Individual
Thank you.
First off, I'd like to thank the committee for the invitation. It's a new experience for me. Building up to my talk, that's another new experience. Thank you for that.
As a bit of background, I'm a physician at the Ottawa Hospital with expertise in public health and HIV. I completed my medical school and internal medicine specialty training at McMaster University, followed by a fellowship in infectious diseases at the University of Manitoba. I went to the Harvard School of Public Health and completed a doctoral degree in epidemiology, and through this training I spent about four years in Kenya doing HIV research.
I took a job at the University of British Columbia in 1999 and spent about 11 years looking at HIV prevention strategies among marginalized populations, including drug users and refugees.
I moved to the University of Ottawa in 2010 to become the head of infectious diseases, with the goal of expanding the public health mandate of the division.
The clinic I am in charge of at the Ottawa Hospital has a large refugee caseload. As would be expected at an infectious disease clinic, we deal with infections. The biggest threats to refugee health, at least on arrival to Canada, are infections, most notably HIV and tuberculosis. On April 25, when Minister Kenney announced the cutbacks to federal health funding, the clinic physicians were in shock.
Currently, every major health care organization across Canada has spoken out in opposition and rallies against these cuts. Although the government has remained steadfast in its public announcements around the cuts, there have been a number of changes and rollbacks that have just added to the confusion.
We are now anticipating a list of designated countries of origin that will further limit access to health care for some refugee claimants.
There are many reasons that these cuts to IFH are bad for refugees, bad for health care, and bad for Canada. However, today I will focus on public health and why limiting access to health care creates a real threat to our collective public health security.
Of all the issues being considered by this committee, public health and the spread of disease should be recognized as a very serious threat to our security. It has been stated over and over by the Minister of Immigration and his staff that infectious diseases that are considered a threat to public health and safety will continue to be covered under the new IFH plans.
However, for all their resilience and optimism, refugees are generally scared and uncertain about their immediate future when they arrive in Canada. For many refugees, western medicine is foreign and unproven. It is only in the hands of skilled health care workers over multiple visits that trust is built and medical recommendations can be followed.
There is much more to treating HIV than providing pills.
One of the biggest health failures in confronting the global HIV epidemic has been a failure to appreciate the importance of providing a comprehensive set of health care supports for people who are HIV positive. In the United States, a study presented at the world AIDS conference this summer showed that of the estimated one million people infected, only 75% knew they were HIV positive, only 50% were receiving HIV care, and only 28% were successfully taking their HIV medications.
This is exactly what happens when people are not engaged in consistent health care. For the IFH program to continue to pay for the cost of HIV medications but fail to support the very care that makes successful treatment possible undermines the whole program. With these cuts, we are at risk of losing the patients who are currently engaged in comprehensive care, and we are much less likely to engage new patients in HIV treatment. We currently have the tools and expertise to diagnose and treat communicable diseases and limit their spread. However, if the patients are driven away and disengaged from health care, there is no way to identify infections and provide the necessary care, treatment, and education.
Tuberculosis is another serious threat to public health security in Canada. Unlike HIV, which will usually be picked up through mandatory HIV testing prior to arrival in Canada, tuberculosis is often asymptomatic and very difficult to diagnose. In many developing countries, the actual infection is picked up during childhood and lies dormant. The only way to diagnose and treat tuberculosis is to have consistent clinical care and to provide diagnostic testing at the first signs of cough, fever, or other more subtle symptoms.
The continued provision of medications to treat tuberculosis through the IFH is a small part of the necessary tools for early detection and the prevention of spread to others. The cutbacks will have a dramatic impact on the ability of public health to protect Canadians from the spread of imported tuberculosis.
There are certainly other threats to public health beyond HIV and tuberculosis; however, these examples serve to illustrate the very real threat to public health and security resulting from cuts to IFH. It is imperative that refugees are offered comprehensive health care to successfully integrate into Canadian society.
IFH funding provides a critical safety net as refugee claimants await the decision about whether they can stay in Canada or not. For communicable diseases, even a few weeks can be critical, and if the process drags on for years—which has been the case for a number of patients in our clinic—then the threat of spreading infectious diseases to others, both inside and outside their immediate community, is very real.
It is very predictable that we will start to see people defaulting on their HIV treatment and presenting with advanced HIV, and we will see women giving birth to HIV-positive babies. In addition, we will see people presenting to emergency departments with advanced tuberculosis, and there will be cases of tuberculosis transmitted within Canada from refugees. These are not far-fetched scenarios. In fact, they were happening before any cutbacks to IFH.
I feel that the cuts to refugee health care are short-sighted and will directly erode the public health care system that we have in Canada. In my view, this has a direct impact upon Canadian security.
Thank you.
3:55 p.m.
NDP
The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims) NDP Jinny Sims
Thank you very much.
I'm going over to Député Menegakis.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
Costas Menegakis Conservative Richmond Hill, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for appearing before us today.
I'm glad we're getting this under way. I have prepared a few questions that I'd like to ask today. We are studying security, and a whole bunch of things come with that. I'm wondering whether I can get your view on a few things.
In your opinion, will the electronic travel authorization—ETA, as it's known—and the entry-exit provisions in the perimeter agreement prevent foreign criminals from abusing our generous immigration system?
Mr. Muller.
4 p.m.
Professor of Political Science, King's University College at Western University, As an Individual
I'm not aware of any data that would demonstrate that.
4 p.m.
Conservative
4 p.m.
Professor of Political Science, King's University College at Western University, As an Individual
Yes. I'm also familiar with the extent to which, when it comes to border security, for example, unless you have catastrophic failure, you tend not to be aware of whether something is effective or not. So, for example, if someone crosses the border, comes into the country, leaves again, and actually doesn't do anything, we have no way of knowing whether in fact that individual was a risky individual. Just because they chose not to act, we're unaware and may falsely put it down as demonstrating effectiveness.
4 p.m.
Conservative
Costas Menegakis Conservative Richmond Hill, ON
If you're familiar with ETA, then you are aware that the ETA will allow the government to know every time a single person enters or exits between Canada and the U.S., even at land crossings.
4 p.m.
Professor of Political Science, King's University College at Western University, As an Individual
Yes, I'm aware of that. The other issue is—
4 p.m.
Conservative