Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Humire. Some of the concerns I have include recourse mechanisms and due process for individuals who believe they are mistakenly targeted or prevented from travel. It's already happening in Canada, for sure.
For example, in my riding we receive many requests from constituents for support for temporary resident visa applications; they feel that their family member was unfairly denied or arbitrarily denied, and then would like some help from my office. In many cases, it's a family member who is looking to come to Canada to celebrate a family occasion or a family holiday.
One example is a gentleman who came to my constituency office for help with his sister's application. He had invited three of his siblings to come to a 25th anniversary party in his family. Two of the siblings were approved, but his sister, despite having property in her home country, a good job, a spouse, and children she'd be returning to, was denied. When she reapplied, she was denied again, this time because the visa officer questioned her purpose for the visit and the family ties she had in Canada, even though the two other siblings from the same country of origin were approved for the same visit for that same purpose—to celebrate the family's anniversary. And all three of them were invited by the same person in Canada.
We've heard testimony from the Office of the Auditor General, some of which you mentioned as well, that quality assurance practices—checks to make sure the system is working—need to be strengthened for the admissibility determination process. The AG's office argues that in a system that is there to help protect Canadians, “it is just as important to review the decisions to grant visas as it is to review the decisions to deny them”.
Our Privacy Commissioner has also stated that failure rates of 1% are quite common for many biometric systems, which have had a significant impact with the system that can include thousands or even millions of people when you take into account the volume that we actually go through.
How would you address recourse mechanisms that address the issue of failure rates in biometrics programs for temporary resident visas? And what remedies should be made available to people who are erroneously matched through biometrics?