Your comment was generous off the top, Ms. Kayabaga, to point out the timing of some of these problems. I adopt the view that they may not necessarily be my fault, but they are my responsibility and, frankly, my opportunity to address.
To your question about how we can use folks who are here now—or, I would even suggest, within IRCC already—to help address this problem, there is one thing I am struck by. When I come to Ottawa every week and have conversations with people who have different life experiences from mine, who come from a different country of origin or a different ethnic or racial background, the conversation changes. I talk about things differently with different people. We have more informed discussions, and I would like to think we make better decisions.
I had a conversation at a newcomer centre in Alberta during a visit last week, and I raised the fact that there is an incredible spirit of entrepreneurialism among some of the refugees who've come to my community. One of the employees stopped me in my tracks when she said that it's great there is a spirit of entrepreneurialism but that I may not realize, coming from my life experience, that this is driven by the fact that a lot of newcomers or people who come from her community weren't able to land jobs within traditional employment scenarios because they were subjected to racism at the time. To have my eyes opened to something that is so glaringly obvious in retrospect demonstrates to me that if we bring different people from different backgrounds into the conversations, we're going to have healthier discussions and make better decisions.
To your question, a big thing that I think we can do is to adopt training and promotion exercises within the department to ensure that the senior leadership and middle management in a department are not homogenous. To have people who understand the life situations of the people who are applying to come to Canada from different countries, who come from different religious or cultural backgrounds, I think, is one of the chief things we can do.
I don't want to eat up all the time. I have much to say about this, but I'll leave it for your next question.