Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 22nd, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I call the meeting to order. Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to meeting number 11 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Today, the committee is beginning its study on differential outcomes in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada decisions.

Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. If interpretation is lost, please inform me immediately and we will ensure that interpretation is properly restored before resuming the proceedings. The “raise hand” feature at the bottom of the screen can be used at any time if you wish to speak or alert the chair.

Before we begin, I have a few administrative matters to raise with the committee. First of all, we have received a request from OCASI, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, to appear on this study. OCASI is an umbrella organization for the immigrant and refugee-serving sector in Ontario and is the largest of its kind in Canada.

Is it the will of the committee to extend an invitation to OCASI to appear on the study of differential outcomes?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

We can extend an invitation, Madam Clerk, to OCASI to appear on the study of differential outcomes.

There is one more thing before we get into the witnesses for today. We received a large volume of useful data and evidence during the committee's recent study of recruitment and acceptance rates of foreign students. The analysts have confirmed that pertinent data could inform our current study on differential outcomes.

Is it the will of the committee that the evidence and documentation received by the committee during the study of recruitment and acceptance rates of foreign students be taken into consideration by the committee during the study of differential outcomes in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada decisions?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Now we will begin our study on differential outcomes in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada decisions.

It is my pleasure to introduce the first witnesses of this important study.

In our first panel, we have Steven Meurrens, an immigration lawyer coming here as an individual. We have Jennifer Miedema, executive director of Remember Ministries. We have Dr. Gideon Christian, president of the African Scholars Initiative.

I would like to welcome all the witnesses who are appearing before the committee today.

I would like to take a few moments for the benefit of the witnesses. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you are ready to speak, you can click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. As a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair.

Interpretation in this video conference will work very much like in a regular committee meeting. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute.

With that, all of the witnesses will have five minutes for opening remarks. After those opening remarks, we will proceed to rounds of questioning.

We will begin with Mr. Steven Meurrens, immigration lawyer.

[Steven Meurrens, Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual]

Thank you.

First, I want to say that it is an honour to participate in your study of differential outcomes in Canadian visa officer decisions.

When I look at the subtopics in this study, I can't help but think that a significant portion of the relevant data and information to these topics has only been obtained through Access to Information Act results that private individuals have shared online.

Given this, I want to focus my presentation today on transparency.

The only way that one can properly review whether there is systemic bias in Canada's immigration programs is if the relevant information is easily available to the public. I want to suggest a few ways to achieve this.

First, prior to 2016, IRCC posted quarterly processing times and approval rates for all of its programs, by visa office. The information showed what actually had occurred at a given office and was very useful. IRCC stopped doing this after 2015. The government's website currently says that they stopped doing this because IRCC wanted to post only global information. While IRCC may have a goal that all applications are processed the same regardless of visa office, I think everyone knows that this is not the case in practice. I would suggest that IRCC bring back the visa office specific quarterly updates.

Second, IRCC should publish as downloadable PDFs Access to Information Act results that pertain to internal manuals, visa office specific training guides on assessing the genuineness of a marriage, and other similar documents. Right now it is possible for the public to search the titles of previous completed requests, but then the individuals have to wait for them to be emailed, which can take several weeks. Again, I don't think most of the public knows that this is possible. The British Columbia government, meanwhile, publishes as downloadable PDFs all non-individual specific, previously disclosed freedom of information releases. This approach is a model for transparency that I believe IRCC should follow.

Third, IRCC should, in my opinion, publish detailed explanations and reports of how its artificial intelligence triaging and new processing tools work in practice. Almost everything public to date has been obtained through Access to Information results that are heavily redacted and which I don't believe present the whole picture. For example, in late 2020 it was revealed through ATIP that all visitor visa applications from China and India have gone through an AI triage since at least 2018. It is not clear how this AI triage works.

I shared an online internal IRCC document from 2018 about the triage of these applications from India and China. It stated that while AI triaged files, visa officers were not told why a file was triaged a certain way, so that officers still reviewed applications. The document then had a 2020 footnote that stated that officers are now provided with key facts about the client to reduce the time spent searching for information. The implication seems to be that the department does not want officers reading entire applications, and there needs to be more transparency about this.

IRCC presents the Chinook processing tool and to a lesser extent AI as just an Excel spreadsheet and a change in process. However, the Pollara Strategic Insight final report says that an IRCC employee, or employees, expressed “Concern that increased automation of processing will embed racially discriminatory practices in a way that will be harder to see over time.” It is not clear why an Excel spreadsheet would do that. It would be great to hear more from the person or people who said this to learn what they are seeing on the ground.

Now, their concerns and mine may not be fully accurate, but in the absence of increased transparency, concerns like this are only growing.

To conclude, in order for this committee to provide ongoing, meaningful insight and oversight into whether there are differential outcomes in decisions based on race and region, the department needs to be more transparent and publish information that reflects what is actually happening rather than what the government's or the department's goals are.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Mr. Meurrens.

We will now proceed to Madam Jennifer Miedema, executive director for Remember Ministries.

Ms. Miedema, you will have five minutes for your opening remarks. You can please proceed.

[Jennifer Miedema, Executive Director, Remember Ministries, As an Individual]

Good morning, Madam Chair and committee members.

I am thankful to be able to join you today to speak on behalf of the refugees I work with and serve.

I am the founder and director of Remember Ministries, a charitable organization focused on sponsoring refugees to Canada, particularly those who have been persecuted for their faith and religious activities. I have been very involved for the past seven years in sponsoring refugees through Canada's private refugee sponsorship program and in helping others do the same.

I want to say that the private refugee sponsorship program is an amazing and worthwhile program. I know many people in Canada who are enormously thankful to be empowered to help refugees in this way. It harnesses the generosity of Canadians and encourages the spirit of welcome in our communities. It makes our country stronger.

I know the committee is studying systemic discrimination leading to differential outcomes in IRCC decisions. I can't speak about any of the technology used in the application process; I can only speak about what I know. When I've asked newcomers and refugees if they had experienced any overt discrimination from the IRCC or visa office workers, they all said no.

However, that is not to say that there is not systemic discrimination within IRCC processes or in how our government chooses to prioritize certain refugee populations over others.

This seems to be the case because of the expediting of some populations of refugees and the long wait times for others. Allocation of resources tells you where priorities are placed or who favoured populations are. Resources do not seem to go towards the processing of private refugee sponsorships, which leads one to believe that those refugees are not a priority.

Current processing times for privately sponsored refugees in Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and South Africa are 31 to 37 months. For refugees in Malaysia and Thailand, it's 37 months. For those in Pakistan, it's 38 months. For those in Lebanon, it is 46 months—almost four years. That's a country where the citizens are experiencing terrible fuel, medicine and food shortages, so imagine what it is like for refugees there.

For those refugees who go through the proper procedure and are fortunate enough to have sponsors in Canada providing finances and support upon their arrival here, it will take them three to four years for their paperwork to be processed.

I don't have words in this short testimony to explain how damaging these wait times are. Members of these refugee families die while waiting. Children are not in school during crucial years of their lives.

Of course, one will naturally compare these wait times with the situation for Ukrainian refugees being welcomed now through an expedited visa process, and with Afghan refugees, some of whom the IRCC expedited applications for as they tried to meet their promised numbers. We remember the prioritization of Syrian refugees when the war broke out. Please do not think that I am being critical of expediting those people in immediate danger and need. None of us would argue against helping these refugees in the most compassionate and efficient way.

What I question is the reallocation of resources away from other refugees who have been waiting for months and years. I question reducing the numbers of other refugees being welcomed in the same year so that more of one population can be welcomed.

What is needed is the ability to find new resources to help people in the current crisis and to never put some people in a favoured category over others. We need to increase the total number of refugees welcomed when there is a crisis, not renege on welcoming others whose applications are already waiting.

Eritreans have been fleeing one of the most repressive regimes on the planet for years. It is a continuous flow of refugees, yet a special program is never put in place for them. A special program has never been put in place for any African refugee group that I know of.

It is good for this committee to examine what is happening in all manner of processes within the IRCC. It is good to ask if Canada's value of equality is being properly represented by government mandates to the IRCC and by the IRCC systems themselves. Vulnerable people are vulnerable people. It shouldn't be a popularity contest between refugees.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

We will now proceed to our last witness for this panel, Dr. Christian, president of the African Scholars Initiative.

Dr. Christian, you can begin, please. You will have five minutes.

[Gideon Christian, President, African Scholars Initiative]

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of this committee, for inviting the African Scholars Initiative, ASI-Canada, to make this submission on your study.

I will limit my opening remarks to two main issues: first, the differential outcomes on study visa decisions by IRCC relating to applications from Africa; and second, the growing use of artificial intelligence technology by IRCC in visa processing.

Data on study visa refusals from IRCC clearly show that countries in sub-Saharan Africa are most adversely impacted by differential outcomes on study visa decisions by IRCC. The Pollara report revealed that systemic bias, discrimination and racism account for this, from outright reference to African countries as “the dirty 30” by IRCC visa officers to outright branding of Nigerians as corrupt and untrustworthy.

IRCC study visa policies have been designed in ways that make it ever more difficult for people from Africa to be able to secure study visas to pursue education in Canada. In my appearance before this committee on February 8, 2022, I highlighted these discriminatory policies by comparing two visa application programs, the student direct stream, or SDS, and the Nigerian student express, or NSE, especially the differential or discriminatory financial requirements under the NSE program.

In addition, I will also note the language requirement under the NSE program, which requires a Nigerian study visa applicant to undertake English-language proficiency to prove to the visa officer that they are proficient in the English language. This requirement is imposed notwithstanding that English is the only official language in Nigeria. It is the official language of instruction in all formal academic institutions in Nigeria. Foreign students from Nigeria are exempted from English-language proficiency by all academic institutions in Canada, but not by IRCC. These subtle, biased, discriminatory and differential study visa requirements inevitably result in adverse differential outcomes in decisions, not just for Nigeria but for Africa.

My second submission relates to the growing use of computer software and artificial intelligence technology by IRCC in visa processing. ASI-Canada is not opposed to some use of AI technologies by IRCC. IRCC has in its possession a great deal of historical data that can enable it to train AI and automate its visa application processes, but there are serious concerns here. External study of IRCC, especially the Pollara report, has revealed system bias, racism and discrimination in IRCC processing of immigration applications. Inevitably, this historical data in possession of IRCC is tainted by this same systematic bias, racism and discrimination.

The problem is that the use of this tainted data to train any AI algorithm will inevitably result in algorithmic racism—racist AI making immigration decisions. As an assistant professor of AI and law at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law, I have spent the last three years researching algorithmic racism, and I can confidently state that the concerns raised here are legitimate and real. Any use of AI technology by IRCC should be subject to external scrutiny. IRCC should be subject to the oversight that will ensure and enhance transparency and fairness in the use of AI.

In conclusion, we recommend an independent oversight of IRCC in two ways: one, an independent ombudsperson to oversee decisions of IRCC visa officers; and two, the establishment of an independent body of experts to oversee IRCC's use of advanced analytics and artificial intelligence technology in visa processing.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions on the issues that I have raised, as well as any other questions you may have on differential outcomes in IRCC decisions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Dr. Christian.

Thanks to all the witnesses for their opening remarks.

We will now start our round of questioning. We will begin with Mr. Hallan.

You will have six minutes. Please begin.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.

My first question is to Mr. Meurrens. We've heard the testimony. We've heard out of the Pollara report the disturbing cases of how people from African communities are being treated and the employees of IRCC are being treated. There is systemic racism going on at IRCC.

In your experience, do you see any current safeguards in the way things are right now?

[Steven Meurrens]

I don't see any safeguards beyond the fact that individuals who may have experienced refusals can, of course, challenge them. However, there isn't anything like an ombudsperson, let's say, that exists where people can express concern if they do feel like they've experienced bad treatment.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Thank you.

To each one of the witnesses today, do you think that a task force is enough to tackle these issues?

[Gideon Christian]

The only recourse now seems to be the Federal Court. The problem here now is that the Federal Court is being overwhelmed with judicial review applications involving IRCC. The last time I checked, which was a couple of days ago, 72% of judicial review applications before the Federal Court involved IRCC, most of them were about decisions made by IRCC.

I think having that independent ombudsperson will go a long way in not just dealing with this issue, but also reducing the workload before the Federal Court relating to decisions from IRCC. It's very important to have an independent ombudsperson where individuals who have experienced discrimination or adverse decisions from IRCC can complain without necessarily having to take the very expensive process of going through the Federal Court and thus overburdening the Federal Court with decisions, or sometimes mostly unreasonable decisions, made by IRCC visa officers.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Thank you.

Could I hear from the other witnesses, please?

[Steven Meurrens]

What I'd like to add is, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, that the Pollara strategic insight report contains statements such as IRCC employees expressing concerns that AI will perpetuate systemic bias, and, as Professor Christian noted, there was a reference to at least one person referring to the “dirty 30” from Africa.

In terms of a task force of some form, I think it would be great to see follow-up because right now these sentences and allegations in the Pollara Strategic Insights report are just hanging there. It would be great to see follow-up with those people, whether through a task force or through this committee to learn more about what is going on.

[Jennifer Miedema]

I would concur with the other two witnesses. Certainly a task force would be a good starting point and an ombudsman certainly sounds like something that would be good. More needs to be investigated to see what the situation is.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Thank you so much.

To your point, Mr. Meurrens, to date we know that no one has been reprimanded or fired for any of the allegations that have been taking place. It seems like things are dragging on without any action to date.

Again, to each one of the witnesses, do you feel that racism within IRCC is contributing to this historic, almost two million, in backlog in immigration?

[Gideon Christian]

We don't have data or statistics before us to be able to pinpoint whether racism is the reason, but the fact is that when you go to the Pollara report, that report is very damning on IRCC when it comes to racism. That report makes it very clear that racism plays a role in immigration decisions. If we go by that fact, then of course it would not be too far-fetched to say that racism could also play a role in the backlog we are currently having. It would be very difficult to say that racism is the sole reason for the backlog, but if racism is endemic the way it has been portrayed in the Pollara report, then definitely it contributes or it could be a contributing factor to the backlog, even though it might not be the sole factor for the backlog.

[Steven Meurrens]

I was thinking about the question, and I think the main cause of the backlog was just the department opening up several new applications and one large express entry draw. I think that was the main cause of the backlog. I don't, at least thinking about it now, view systemic racism as being a great contributing factor to it.

[Jennifer Miedema]

Yes, I don't think it was the main factor. It certainly could be a factor, but there would be such complex reasons behind these huge wait times right now, with COVID and the other actions the government took to bring in groups of refugees.

I don't have the knowledge to be able to answer that question any better.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Thank you.

I'll use the rest of my time to ask if each one of the witnesses could table any data or information they have in that regard that would help this report to address the systemic racism in IRCC.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Mr. Hallan.

Mr. El-Khoury, you have six minutes. Please begin.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I welcome the witnesses and thank them very much for being here today.

My first question is for Mrs. Miedema.

I'm truly humbled by your work and your commitment. The human race needs people like you, who help others having trouble getting respect in the country where they live. What a wonderful mission.

Can you describe some of the issues your organization faces in general? You named a lot of countries where application processing times can vary. Can you provide more detail on the applications of francophone students from Africa?