Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 7th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Mr. Genuis, you cannot make an amendment to your amendment.

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

Okay. Maybe somebody else will want to propose the idea.

I think if we clarify the motion with “following consultations with members about their availability”, it will assist us in getting this done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Mr. Genuis.

Just to clarify that for all members, the person who has moved the amendment cannot make changes to it.

Next are Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe and then Ms. Kwan.

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

I understand and respect what Mr. Genuis said. In this case, I suggest that we add a meeting during a week when the House is sitting. I think we would have consensus. Officials would come testify at that meeting. We would not lose any committee time, since that additional meeting would be held during a parliamentary week. Everyone would be happy to have time for their constituency work. That is what I am proposing. That would fix everything. What do you think about it?

Madam Chair, may I propose a subamendment to Mr. Genuis' proposal so that the additional meeting would be held during a parliamentary week, if the clerk can secure the House services we will need?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

We have a subamendment.

Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe is moving to change “during the Easter week” to “sitting weeks”. That's what he has proposed. We have that subamendment on the floor now.

We have Ms. Kwan and then Mr. Genuis.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'll be very quick.

I'll support the subamendment. I think the idea here is just to try to get an extra sitting period to accommodate this. Whether it happens in the break week or during our regular week, I'm fine with that. I fully understand that people have lots of things that they've already planned. It might be difficult to make adjustments.

In the spirit of collaboration and co-operation, I will accept Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe's recommendation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Go ahead, Mr. Genuis.

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

Okay. I think that maybe sometimes, rather than sub-subamending everything, it's more efficient to make sure the chair understands what the general direction of the committee is and to go from there, right?

We could specify it in the language of the motion, but I'm getting the sense that there's a consensus, hopefully, around saying that we should not do this meeting during a regular CIMM committee slot. It should happen during a sitting week, but in an additional time slot so that we're not detracting from the times that have already been set aside for the committee to do its work.

If there's a consensus around that, then we can I think agree by unanimous consent to pull the amendments and adopt the motion.

Is there agreement to direct the chair accordingly?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Is there unanimous consent on Mr. Genuis's suggestion that the meeting on the proposed motion by Ms. Lalonde be held in the sitting weeks but not during the regular CIMM hours? If that's the will of the committee, I will have to work with the clerk to see what time slot would be available, based on the services.

Do I have unanimous consent on that? Okay?

Everyone seems to be in agreement that we dispose of the subamendment and the amendment.

(Amendments withdrawn)

Now we have on the floor the motion that has been moved by Ms. Lalonde.

Seeing no further debate, do I have unanimous consent on that motion?

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

The motion is adopted.

Go ahead, Mr. Genuis.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Since we're doing motions, I'd like to move the one that I have on notice as well with respect to disclosure of information on the differential outcomes study.

I too think this is very important for getting the technical information we require. From a number of witnesses, we heard concerns about transparency and their ability to have access to information. I think this committee should be accessing some of that information to strengthen our work and also to make that information available to witnesses who said they need that information and don't have access to it.

This is the motion that I'm proposing. Please bear with me. It's somewhat lengthy, but members have notice of it:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(1)(a) and in relation to the committee's study of Differential Outcomes in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada Decisions, that the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship provide the committee with:

(a) any and all data and documents in its possession that show acceptance and rejection rates for visa applications broken down by (i) processing office, (ii) application category, (iii) country of origin of applicant, (iv) race, and (v) religion; (b) a list of which visa offices currently use advanced analytics to triage applications—

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

I have a point of order, Madam Chair. The interpreter does not have the motion in front of her, so she can't interpret my colleague's comments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Just one second, Mr. Genuis. Can you give that to the interpreters?

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

Yes, I'm sending it now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

It has been mailed to the interpreters, so they should have it.

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

(b) a list of which visa offices currently use advanced analytics to triage applications and which application they are used for; (c) a list of how many different advanced analytics triage models there are and which visa offices use which model; (d) any quality assurance reports for each advanced analytics model that is being used by a visa office; (e) the current instructions to decision makers regarding the implementation of the advanced analytics pilot model for any processing centers that use advanced analytics; (f) any training manuals or reviews regarding Watch Tower and a list of all priority flags that have been used in Chinook; (g) Chinook+ and GCMS Chinook user manuals—

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

I am sorry, Madam Chair. The interpretation is not coming through the right channel. Out of respect for the House staff, we want interpreters to be able to do their job properly. That's all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Is it okay with the interpreters?

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

I'll return to (b):

(b) a list of which visa offices currently use advanced analytics to triage applications and which application they are used for; (c) a list of how many different advanced analytics triage models there are and which visa offices use which model; (d) any quality assurance reports for each advanced analytics model that is being used by a visa office; (e) the current instructions to decision makers regarding the implementation of the advanced analytics pilot model for any processing centers that use advanced analytics; (f) any training manuals or reviews regarding Watch Tower and a list of all priority flags that have been used in Chinook; (g) Chinook+ and GCMS Chinook user manuals; (h) all training manuals and documents prepared and used in training IRCC staff on the use of Chinook; (i) all contracts IRCC holds with Deloitte & Touche Llp, Accenture Inc, and McKinsey regarding artificial intelligence, digital platform modernization, Chinook, and the digital services response project; (j) privacy analysis conducted with respect to Chinook; (k) contracts between IRCC and ApplyBoard and between IRCC and ApplyProof since 2015; (l) project launch, terms of reference and roadmap documents for 'The Service Transformation Strategy and Roadmap'; 'The IM/IT Strategy & Roadmap Project'; TDSS' "Innovation Strategy"; (m) IRCC Policy Playbook on Automated Support for Decision-Making (All editions); (n) any additional programming information and instructions used for advanced analytics systems; (o) the raw and complete responses that IRCC employees provided to Pollara Strategic Insights for the Anti-Racism Study; (p) the current and historical processing times for each visa office and category, from 2015 until now; (q) the course content and materials used for any anti-racism training or information sessions conducted for IRCC employees; and (r) all materials produced for the IRCC Digital Transformation Interdepartmental Advisory Committee (DMA Level); and, that the said material be delivered to the committee within 40 days, along with any proposed redactions; versions of the documents with the proposed redactions shall be published on the committee's website within 10 days of receipt; the committee shall issue a press release highlighting the publication of these documents, and unredacted documents shall be distributed to committee members within the same time frame; the documents in redacted and unredacted forms shall be shared with the Parliamentary Law Clerk, who will then be invited to meet with the committee in camera to advise on the appropriateness of the proposed redactions; and, the committee may then make determinations as to whether to publish all, some, or none of the redacted documents.

Madam Chair, I want to emphasize that the list of things I'm asking for is not my own list. I reached out to the witnesses who had come to us and raised concerns about transparency issues, and I simply encouraged them to tell me what information they would need in order to be able to do their work in a more transparent way.

Members may have concerns with one or two of the letter items, and certainly we can amend the motion, but we had many witnesses tell us that there were concerns about transparency and access to information, so I asked them what information they needed, and they provided me with a list.

I am now coming back to the committee to ask us to use our powers as a committee to do something concrete, which is address the transparency challenges, gather this information, give the government the unfettered opportunity to redact where they think appropriate, publish the unredacted documents and then be able to review the redacted documents ourselves to assess the appropriateness of those redactions.

I think that's a reasonable procedure that tries to respond to a very real issue raised by witnesses. I hope this motion will have the support of colleagues.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Mr. Genuis.

Seeing no further hands raised for the debate, we can go to the vote.

Mr. Clerk, can you please take the vote?

Go ahead, Ms. Kwan.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I'm sorry, Madam Chair. I want to make a quick comment before we go to the vote.

We passed a motion just now from Ms. Lalonde that will bring officials to this committee meeting, and we can request undertakings that could include the documents that Mr. Genuis has requested, so in many ways it's a duplication of a request, I would think.

From that perspective, I would like to proceed with having officials here and then with having us make the request to the officials. Hopefully, we'll get the documentation that we require before we proceed with this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Go ahead, Mr. Genuis.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Respectfully, I know that in the past Ms. Kwan has been a great champion of transparency around these issues, and I hope we'll see that continue.

Look, this motion is very different from asking officials to appear. Officials coming and answering our questions, or at least responding to our questions, is very different from requesting primary source documents and making those primary source documents public. Now, I suppose I could move this motion again, after the officials are here, but the officials are not going to come with all these documents in hand. If we want the officials to come with all these documents in hand, let's make it explicit in this motion, although this motion gives them much more time to do so. Again, I think in the interest of transparency, let's recognize that requests for documents are very different from hearing verbal responses from officials.

That's really all I have to say. We can proceed to a vote. The stakeholders will be able to see, of course, who's standing with them in their desire for transparency.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Go ahead, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe, and then Ms. Kwan.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It is difficult to disagree with Mr. Genuis' arguments; I think he is completely right. We will never receive the information requested in this motion from officials who will appear before us. It seems to me that is obvious.

Since our committee started working, in both studies we have carried out, we dealt with issues of lack of transparency and opacity at IRCC. This motion will enable us to obtain important information from that department. I don't see how someone could vote against a motion to obtain more information. That is a bonus for all of us as members of this committee. It will enable us to do our job properly.

It is very difficult for me to see how someone could vote against a motion requesting documents from IRCC if we want to fight the lack of transparency and the opacity within that department.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

Please go ahead, Ms. Kwan, and then Mr. Redekopp.