Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 22nd, 2022

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Meurrens, this committee has specific powers respecting the ability to send for documents. Those powers are completely unfettered and that's a core principle of our constitutional reality. In the midst of hearing about the problems of transparency, the committee actually has within its power to take some steps to concretely help you solve them.

I've just been wordsmithing on the fly here a possible draft motion that we could consider at a later date. I wonder if you can clarify specifically the data you want because then we can request and publish that data as a committee.

It sounds like you're looking for rates of acceptance and refusal broken down by country and subnational regions of application and what kinds of visas are being applied for, dating back to 2015.

Is that correct? Is there any other information that you would like us to send for and publish?

[Steven Meurrens]

No. The refusal and approval rates based on visa office can be obtained through Access to Information Act requests. What I would like to see is somehow learning from the actual people who process these files how they are processing them in practice, and then Professor Christian, who is an expert in AI, might be able to speak more to something that would show what the keywords are in the AI triaging that goes on, based on visa office.

How does the AI actually work in Chinook? What are the keywords that are being input to flag files, and how do things actually work on the ground with regard to the processing of applications?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you.

Just because of time limitations, what I'd ask all our witnesses to do, then, is to send a follow-up in writing, the specific information, whether it's Chinook keywords or whatever it is, that the committee should request and publish so that we can ensure that you have the information going forward and we have that information as well.

Professor Christian, Mr. Meurrens and Ms. Miedema, would you maybe nod to confirm that you're able to do that in the next little while, to send us that information and we will work on getting a motion adopted at this committee with respect to that?

Okay. Thank you.

I will say as well, even information that's available through ATIP. Given issues of redaction and access, I think it's still worthwhile for the committee to include some of that information as part of a document request motion in order to publish that on our website and have ease of access.

Ms. Miedema, thank you for the incredible work you're doing with respect to refugees and for your testimony today. It has been an ongoing frustration for me in talking to those involved with private sponsorship, the piling on of challenges, of red tape, of additional burdens. It seems as though continually the approach is how do we squeeze private sponsors, instead of empowering them and facilitating the great work that they do.

It also seems to me that the fairest system and the way we welcome the most refugees is for the government to spend as much of its time, energy and resources as possible in getting behind private sponsors, including through more joint sponsorship programs. If we moved away from this public and private model separately and put all those resources behind joint sponsorship, we could welcome more refugees, and those who are coming as refugees would benefit from being welcomed by a community. Privately sponsored refugees have a huge advantage in terms of coming into existing communities of love and support whereas government-sponsored refugees have a level of financial support but don't have the kind of psychosocial support that comes with being part of a community.

Do you share those ideas and concerns, and could you speak more to how we should be shifting from the current mentality, which is piling barriers on private sponsors, and talk about the things we can do to empower, strengthen and get more people saying yes to being involved in this work?

[Jennifer Miedema]

Yes. Thank you for your comments. You are bang on in everything you're saying.

There are some opportunities for partnership between government and private groups with the blended visa office-referred sponsorships, which are great, but really we need more spots.

There are many private sponsors ready to submit applications every year, and everybody is always fighting for spots. I don't know why this is, because private people are bringing their own funds and willing to provide that settlement support for the first year, so yes, you're right about more sponsors.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Yes. It's absolutely insane that we stop people who want to help refugees and pay for it themselves.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting. The time is up.

We will now proceed to Ms. Kayabaga.

You will have five minutes for your round of questioning.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll start by thanking our witnesses for being here today.

I will go directly to Mr. Christian. You talked about the discrimination that you see in AI collection. My understanding is that it collects data and provides it to decision-makers who are humans.

What other barriers do you see that are showing in the system of collecting that data and providing it to a human person who makes those decisions when it comes to refusal rates for African countries?

[Gideon Christian]

As artificial intelligence is being used by IRCC now, based on internal documents obtained, we are getting to the stage where IRCC is using AI to automate visa refusals, so we have a case of block processing of visa applications. Steven made reference to this earlier, the lack of individuality to this area. There is a lack of individuality in treating applications. Applications seem to be homogeneous, which is not often the case.

My major concern with the use of this technology by IRCC is the fact that to train an AI algorithm, you need huge amounts of data. IRCC inevitably has data from a historical collection of data. The problem is that, historically, you have been collecting data that seems to be biased against a particular group of people or a particular continent. When you use that data to train an AI algorithm, what the AI algorithm does is simply regurgitate those biases. This time it's even more difficult, because it becomes more difficult to be able to identify this problem.

The problem we have here, which I'm trying to highlight, is that if IRCC uses these data to train AI algorithms—which I believe it is doing now—without adequately trying to address the bias issue, we are going to have a situation where the problem we have identified in the Pollara report is now embedded into technology and it becomes more difficult to identify.

This will continue to perpetuate the discrimination we have highlighted against people from the sub-Saharan African continent, especially with study visa applications coming from that part of the world. That is of great concern to us at ASI Canada.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

That goes right into my next question.

Given that there is a higher rate of refusals in both English-speaking and French-speaking African countries, I wonder if you're aware that Ghana, for example, serves about 13 countries. What suggestions would you make for IRCC to improve that?

It's easier to talk about AI that is collecting data that goes directly to a human decision-maker. Is there a resource issue in this situation?

[Gideon Christian]

AI is an amazing technology. It performs tasks in a fraction of the time that it would take humans to perform those tasks, so in terms of efficiency, yes, AI will make tasks efficient. It will result in greater processing of a greater number of applications in a fraction of the time it would take humans to do it.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

I'm sorry, Mr. Christian. My question is around the resources for visa offices and increasing the number of offices on the continent. Ghana processes about 13 countries and oversees 26 other countries. What are your comments on that?

[Gideon Christian]

I would say that if we can have more visa offices processing these applications—especially localized visa offices—with more resources and more humans doing the work, rather than trying to outsource the work to technology, it will go a long way in addressing it. The humans who would be making these decisions should be those who are trained to be able to identify conscious and unconscious bias when they see it.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

What would that training entail? Let's say someone who is processing visa applications in Ghana is processing a visa application from Kenya. How can they make that decision? What recommendations would you make for someone who is a little bit farther away making those decisions? What would you want them to know?

If we were to increase those resources to make sure that they're accurate, what kinds of recommendations would you make on that?

[Gideon Christian]

The individuals making those decisions should be very conscious of the individual circumstances of the applicants as they relate to where they are coming from. Being able to understand the cultural and individual circumstances of the applicants will go a long way in addressing this bias and seeing individuals as being corrupt, just because of the area or the part of the world they're coming from.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

That means you're aware, Mr. Christian, that these decisions are finally made by a human and not AI—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting, Ms. Kayabaga. Your time is up.

We will now proceed to Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe for two and a half minutes.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the witnesses participating in today's meeting. We will benefit from their expertise as we draft this report and make our recommendations. I thank them very much.

I'd like to ask a question to Mr. Meurrens, who is an immigration lawyer.

I'm going to hypothesize. Is it possible that underfunding of IRCC offices that have to process applications is resulting in faster and less thorough processing of applications?

Let's take the example of an officer working in an understaffed IRCC office. If they see the caseload growing every day, could that influence their decisions? The decision to refuse an application may be made quickly, while the decision to accept one may take longer.

Could understaffing be part of the problem?

[Steven Meurrens]

Oh, for sure it is. I'm critical of the fact that applications aren't being reviewed in their entirety, but I also recognize that it's impossible, given current staffing levels, for all applications to be reviewed in their entirety. I don't know what the solution is, and it's a challenging question, but with the sheer volume....

I can't imagine the work that a visa officer does in terms of the sheer number of pages that they are legally expected to read in a given day.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Christian, since I only have one minute left, I will leave the closing remarks to you.

If you were to include a recommendation in the report we're about to write, what would your top priority be?

[Gideon Christian]

My number one recommendation concerns the fact that the IRCC is using and will continue to use artificial intelligence technology. That is inevitable. Therefore, we should have an independent body of experts to oversee IRCC's use of artificial intelligence technology.

That would be my number one recommendation, and I'm making that recommendation based on lack of transparency surrounding IRCC's use of that technology.

As someone who works in that area, I'm really concerned about that lack of transparency, and I believe many immigration lawyers in Canada are really concerned about IRCC's lack of transparency with regard to its use of computer technologies and artificial intelligence technology.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you. We will now end our first panel with Ms. Kwan.

You will have two and a half minutes. Please proceed.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I'd like to go back to Professor Christian on my last question, around the mandate. Could you answer that question, please?

[Gideon Christian]

Can you please repeat the question? I can't remember it.

Are you talking about the mandate of the committee or the mandates of the [Technical difficulty--Editor] I suggested?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Sorry, Madam Chair. Could I save my time on this? It seems there were some technical difficulties. I couldn't actually hear Dr. Christian's answer and I don't think he heard my question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

He wanted clarification on what the question was. Can you just provide him with what exactly you're asking?