Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 3rd, 2022

[Caroline Xavier]

I have nothing to do with regard to not trusting the law clerk. This is not me trying to be difficult, nor is the department, for that matter, trying to be difficult.

What I would recommend is that we explore what could be the art of the possible with regard to the proposal that the law clerk potentially look at the redacted information in case this was an oversight from our perspective.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Specifically what the law clerk asked was to be able to see the unredacted documents so that he can determine that.

If you don't think the law clerk can do his job properly, would the department be willing to provide the unredacted documents to this committee in camera? That way we can review the documents without making them public. Do you trust parliamentarians to do this work?

[Caroline Xavier]

I do trust that parliamentarians, Madame Chair, are doing the work that is necessary to do to ensure transparency to Canadians. With that said, I think I will take back what has been provided as advice here to see what would be the best course of action for the way forward.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

I find these answers a little bit disappointing. Hopefully when the report on privileges is completed, we can have a full discussion at committee.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Mr. Redekopp. We will now proceed to Ms. Kayabaga.

Ms. Kayabaga, you will have five minutes for your round of questioning.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you, Madame Chair.

I would like to start by thanking the officials for extending their time and having to have unfair conversations that are being thrown at them this morning. There are some questions that are not fair to be asked of the officials this morning. I will start right there.

I would like to start my questions with Farah Boisclair, who is the director of the anti-racism task force.

Ms. Boisclair, can you tell me how long you've been doing this role? What was the original mandate when you started this role?

[Farah Boisclair]

The task force was established back in mid-2020. This was following the murder of George Floyd. There had been a lot of conversations happening within the department, and a willingness to tackle systemic racism. This was a global movement across the world and within Canada, and the public service was no different.

The task force was established with the scope of looking at systemic racism and guiding the department to look at systemic racism in managing our people, our employees and our public-facing programs and policies and how we deliver our services as well.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you for that.

Basically you're able to respond to where we're at based on the work that you've been doing since 2020, but when we address some of the issues that have been brought up in IRCC around, let's say, refusal rates or other comments around.... Some of the witnesses mentioned racism in the Chinook program, in the processing or the refusal rates for African countries. I personally don't think that's something that you can answer. I personally think that it's unfair for you to have to answer that question.

I'm going to go to Madam Xavier.

There have been comments around the response as to why there are higher rates of refusal in African francophone countries. One of the responses that we received was that perhaps some students switched streams when they arrived here.

Has that number changed over the last 10 or 15 years? Has that number ever shifted, or is it still the same number of people who are switching streams?

[Caroline Xavier]

I'm going to ask Madam Lang to give you additional information, as she may have a little bit more detail to be clearer in her response.

[Tara Lang]

In terms of switching streams, I do not have those statistics at my fingertips, but what I do know is that overall, approval rates have significantly increased over the past couple of years. I think they are up almost threefold between 2016 and 2019 in terms of approval rates for African students. I would really appreciate the opportunity to get the data correct for the chair.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

That's interesting, because the information that we have is higher rates of refusals for Africans, especially from francophone countries. I'm not sure if that data came from your department, because the data that we have shows that the refusal rates are up to 70% to 80%. There was a study during COVID to review it, and it showed that specific African countries, mainly francophone countries, had higher rates of refusals. Can you or someone else in your department comment on that?

[Tara Lang]

Thank you, Madam Chair, for the question, and I apologize. I don't think I understood the question correctly.

We are committed to a fair and non-discriminatory application of immigration laws. Volumes of temporary resident, visa and study permit applications from Africa have tripled from 2016 to 2019 across the top eight source countries from Africa. The number of refusals is generally increasing in relative proportion.

IRCC understands that the applicants, as well as the schools that accepted them, are disappointed when an application is refused, but there is no great difference between application approval rates for applicants from French-speaking African countries and other countries in the region, or approval rates of those destined for Quebec—

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

I apologize for cutting you off. Are you saying that...?

I think maybe you're answering the wrong question. My question is whether there are higher rates of refusals for African students—

[Tara Lang]

Yes, there are.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Perhaps you're trying to say that the language has no play in this.

One of the suggestions we heard from witnesses is that we open more offices across the continent to make sure that we reduce or tackle this higher rate of refusals. Can you comment on the tools that you intend to use?

I really hope that you have the same data we have, because if you don't, we're going to be having a different conversation. Witnesses have come forward and have provided us with some things that we can do to address that, and if we don't have the same numbers, we're going to have a harder time addressing that situation.

Can someone in your department who has this information comment?

[Tara Lang]

Yes, absolutely, we can get more clarity. However, Madam Chair, I think I misunderstood the question.

It is true that African students have a higher refusal rate than other top source countries of students coming to Canada. The most common reasons for refusals include applicants being unable to show officers that they are able to support themselves in Canada or that they would leave Canada if they no longer had legal status in the future.

In terms of the question—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

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

We will now proceed to Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe. You have two and a half minutes. Please begin.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I did some small calculations while listening to my colleagues ask their questions. There are six IRCC offices in Europe that deal with visas. These six offices serve a population of about 746 million people. We are talking about a ratio of 124 million people per office. Now, in West Africa, so for Dakar, this ratio is 276 million people per office.

For IRCC, is a person from Africa less important than a person from Europe?

My question is for Ms. Xavier.

[Caroline Xavier]

Madam Chair, I thank the member for his question.

No, we do not open offices in particular locations because we find one continent more important than another. We are considering the possibility, especially because we want to increase francophone immigration, of opening an office in Cameroon, for example. So the answer is that we do not consider one continent less important than another.

As I said before, it is important to continue to analyze how and where we assess applications. We need to consider whether we need to open more offices, as has been recommended to us. That would be a possibility, but we would need to ensure that we have the resources to meet the needs that arise.

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

What explains this difference in ratios, then?

Why do we lag so far behind on the African continent compared to the European continent?

[Caroline Xavier]

Madam Chair, I thank the member for his question.

I don't know if it can be said that we are behind the curve. When we open a mission or an office, we use several pieces of information as criteria, not just the availability of a population. We have to make sure that the country where we want to establish a mission or an office is safe, that we can get people there and that the volume is adequate. There are several elements that come into play in the analysis when it comes to setting up an overseas office. In addition, this is done in conjunction with Global Affairs Canada. So it's not entirely our decision.

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

We are given excuses and pretexts every time.

I don't blame you, Ms. Xavier. You are defending your department.

Now, if you can't name a problem, it's very difficult to fix it. I have just demonstrated to you that there is a fairly major difference in the population ratio for an IRCC office between Europe and Africa, and I am still met with pretexts and excuses.

I strongly suggest that you analyze and assess the situation quite quickly and realize that there is a problem and it needs to be addressed.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe. Your time is up. Maybe you can come back to it in the next round.

We will now to go to Ms. Kwan.

Ms. Kwan, you have two and a half minutes. Please begin.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Just to clarify from my last question, I would like the officials to provide information on the kind of training that middle management and executives are undertaking with respect to anti-racism training. How is the effectiveness of the training being evaluated? What recourse is there if the evaluation indicates that the training has not been effective? If officials could get that response to the committee, I would appreciate that.

Next, witnesses have indicated that there is differential treatment for resettlement organizations whose primary mandate or focus is on women. They indicated that often they are being asked to provide extra accountability measures, with extra requirements layered on them, and that even, to some degree, their assessment officer feels compelled to do so because otherwise that assessment officer is mocked by colleagues in the department.

This is absolutely extremely concerning. I would like to ask the officials to table the practices that the department undertakes for accountability measures for resettlement organizations and if they're being applied to organizations in the same way. If not, how do they differ, and why are they different, then, in their application? I would appreciate it if I could get that information from the officials.

Earlier we were talking about processing delays. I'm interested in this information. With respect to processing delays, could the officials provide information to the committee to advise us on how often the processing delay is related to the lack of immigration levels numbers? In other words, it's not so much that the staff hasn't processed the application; rather, the processed application is sitting on a shelf in somebody's office somewhere, because they don't have the immigration levels numbers to accommodate it. I would love to get that information from the officials, if I might.

Finally, Madam Chair, oftentimes applications are delayed. There might be differential treatment or something else, but the steps where they are hung up are often tied to CBSA with respect to security screening. I would like to know how many applications are delayed as a result of the security screening not having been processed. If we could get that information broken down by country and region, that would be appreciated.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Ms. Kwan. Your time is up.

We will now go to Mr. Redekopp for five minutes.

Mr. Redekopp, please begin.