Thank you.
The Calgary Immigrant Women’s Association has worked with a total of about 23 officers over the years. I believe about 27% of them were racialized. We believe that as a settlement agency, the highest level of helpfulness that we can provide in relation to the study is the extent of differential outcomes for our racialized clients.
The IRCC survey report indicates that many of the surveyed employees were in Canada by virtue of immigration, and were grateful to be able to contribute to the work and mandate of IRCC. This is in line with our agency's experiences as well. Over 90% of our clients are racialized, as are 76% of our staff and leadership team. By extension, when working with CIWA, IRCC is working with approximately 12,000 racialized immigrant women annually. Our statements on differential outcomes are based on decisions around program funding, client service and policy.
On the issue of discriminatory rules for processing immigration applications from some countries that are different than for others, this has been observed and voiced by some CIWA clients on study permits through different streams. The student direct stream takes up to 20 days for the currently listed 14 countries on IRCC's web page, while processing times under the regular study permit can take from anywhere between 90 and 300 days.
We have observed that clients who come on a student visa from Nigeria typically do not bring their children with them, as there is a higher rate of refusal when children are included in their study permit application. They access CIWA for supports with applications to bring their families to join them after they themselves make their way to Canada. As a result of such delays caused by differential processing times, we have to deal with additional stressors arising from delayed family reunification, including parenting challenges and family conflict, both of which have far-reaching effects on families.
An extreme example around the notion of regional experiences is the case of a Sudanese CIWA client who sought private refugee sponsorship for her daughter and eight children. The application has been in the queue in Nairobi since December 2020, and will cost the private sponsoring group $80,000. The sponsoring group already spent over $15,000 last year on food, medicine, a mud hut home and schooling for children during that wait period.
While some VISA offices in other countries processed applications throughout COVID, Kenya's office was closed. Private refugee sponsorship, a point of Canadian pride, will falter under these high costs caused by uneven times.
An example of differential funding decisions by IRCC is the federal government's decision at the end of 2018 to invest in specialized employment programs for racialized immigrant women across Canada. Agencies were invited to apply for a 28-month project to facilitate employment bridging programs. After the federal election in 2019, the same government that enacted the funding decided to rescind the funding decision, cutting the project after only 16 months. Widely perceived as an election promise to attract voters and capture the ears of newcomers at that time, we felt that this decision could be perceived as hugely differential. Due to our capacity and other funding supports that we had to access at that time, we did complete the project in line with our original time frame of 28 months.
In relation to the increased automation of processing embedding racially discriminatory practices in a way that will be harder to see over time, this is really close to our heart, because we believe we know a lot about the risks associated with this. High-level decisions by IRCC in relation to service delivery improvements directly affect service provider organizations and clients. These decisions should be executed after formal consultation and research with stakeholder engagement. Unanticipated outcomes need to be heard and mitigated. Negative outcomes of rushed automation decisions will definitely affect highly barriered newcomers, including those who are racialized.
We recognize that process- and analytics-driven approaches are necessary to deal with backlogs. However, automation in processing vulnerable populations should be called an improvement only if it has well-defined exceptions—