Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2022

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Tao, were you going to comment?

[Wei William Tao]

Thank you, Mr. Seeback.

I would add that, from my perspective, we do have to suss out the public-facing element of what IRCC is telling the public and putting out, like “We're not going to automate refusals; we're not going to do any of these things” versus what's going on behind the scenes via the policy playbook, which I included as part of my brief.

Internally, I think IRCC is looking to automate refusals, is looking to try to remove humans, to have no human in the loop. For me, the concerning aspect is that until we put Chinook on the table and have proper independent consultations, though possibly a commission or ombudsperson, these will be ingrained into artificial intelligence and into algorithms that then become impenetrable, and especially when you litigate and especially when we do all these tools.

If we don't have the back data, we are unable to actually pursue those processes. Therefore, I second what Lou said, and I believe this data needs to be put on the table.

It doesn't have to be public. It can be private, in a secure setting, but it needs to be put on the table in order for us to decide the next path forward with Chinook and the future replacement.

Thank you.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I'm going to hazard a guess that this is not a new issue. It's 2022; these rates have been getting worse since 2015. Have your organizations been raising the alarm bells with the government and saying we've got a significant problem here?

[Wei William Tao]

Immigration actually only released the information about Chinook in a litigation case, which I peripherally was a part of, last year. September of last year is when we really started mobilizing.

So the fact that this was started in 2018 and for three years it was under wraps—and there's no single Google search on this term “Chinook”—for me was really troubling. This should have been brought to stakeholders as soon the idea came up for Chinook. That is my perspective.

[Lou Janssen Dangzalan]

If I may, Mr. Seeback, if we're looking for historical origins of Chinook, one might want to ask Mr. Mario Belissimo in Toronto, who has done a detailed study on this. There is an origin story from the Manila visa office called hiraya. We couldn't really talk about stats until the Ocran litigation came to the front.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

We will now proceed to Mr. Ali.

You have six minutes for your round of questioning.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, all.

I'd like to invite each of the witnesses to comment on three observations made in an email my office received from international student recruitment staff at an Ottawa university.

First, they had noticed the struggles for Africans to get approved for study permits in the past three years. They drew particular attention to the difficulty for francophone applicants from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Senegal. For anglophone students, they said that applicants from Nigeria faced similar difficulties.

Second, they raised a concern that there seem to be two messages to applicants, and I quote one: “we need new immigrants to Canada, and we offer the post-graduation work permit, but do not mention that you want to stay in Canada after your studies.” A lot of African students are confused by these messages.

Third, they said that African applicants believe that Canadian universities have a say in accepting or refusing applicants regarding immigration. They suggested that it could be good to advertise that the two application processes of academic and immigration are independent. Can you please comment on this?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Mr. Tao, would you like to start?

[Wei William Tao]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm going to just focus on one part of the question and maybe leave some of the other witnesses to answer other parts.

I think the dual intention element is definitely of major concern. There's a provision in [Technical difficulty—Editor] for dual intention, meaning that if I come to Canada temporarily, if I have a future permanent resident intention, that is permissible as long as I can show that I can leave Canada at the end of my authorized stay.

Unfortunately for students, the permanent residence pathway could be five, six or seven years in the future, so that dual intention is not taken into consideration by the visa offices in a very significant way.

Then there are these assumptions about the home country, the family that might be coming and the economic conditions of the country they are leaving, and that is prejudiced into a refusal decision. I think that dual intention really needs a rethink in order for this provision to be successful.

[Lou Janssen Dangzalan]

I also wanted to touch upon dual intent, because that certainly encapsulates a lot of the issues facing a lot of African, and francophone African especially, students coming in from outside Canada to study.

It's very interesting that this is actually counterposable with the efforts that the Government of Canada is doing abroad to recruit international students. Just recently my articling student Andrew Koltun and I attended virtually a conference in Manila talking about coming to Canada, and Ambassador Peter MacArthur actually did the sales pitch to a lot of candidates to come to Canada and spend so much of their money.

Immigration also talked about how easy the process is but never talked about the possibility that this could be a very difficult path.

The dual intention issue, which was raised in the previous committee meeting, doesn't really make an assumption that the international students are going to violate the laws in Canada, but it seems to me, in terms of my handling of cases coming in from Africa, that there is that presumption more so than with those coming in from other parts of the world.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Mr. Fotang, would you like to comment?

[Christian Fotang]

Yes, just to echo Mr. Dangzalan and Mr. Tao, I've heard situations from our deans here at CASA that they have been given funding from Citizenship and Immigration Canada to go out and recruit students in these African French-speaking countries, telling them to come to Canada and that there are opportunities and pathways for residency and citizenship. They make all these efforts, and universities use their funding to go out and recruit these students.

When the students do apply and when they do show up to apply for a study permit, they are told that we don't believe they'll go back to their home country after they're done studying, which is a completely paradoxical message to what they were told by university staff.

More transparency needs to be made by the government. More communication needs to be done between IRCC and the staff on the ground to make sure that students are getting the correct information. If not, it's really a waste of resources for the government, the universities that are going out there trying to recruit these students and us as students.

That's all I'll echo on that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

You have 30 seconds.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Quickly, the program Chinook, IRCC has taken it on.

Can anyone comment on whether there was any procedure based on any studies or anything? How have they taken this program to implement it? Can anyone comment on that, please?

[Wei William Tao]

Very little. From all the stats we've gotten, even from the affidavits that have been filed by IRCC, there was very little legal oversight and stakeholder outreach. It's very much officer rules with all the experiences of different visa officers in different posts correlated into one. The problem is, as we know, depending on these offices, they are dealing with their own unique situations and their own prejudices. To put them all on the table without any person—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Sorry for interrupting. Time is up.

We will have to proceed to our next member.

Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe, you can please go ahead for six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much to the witnesses who are with us today. You know just how important this study is to international students, to our societies and to our educational institutions. I am really glad to have you here today. You know, this study is really important to me.

We're hearing a lot about the Chinook system today. I'd like to continue the discussion on this because, on Tuesday, we were told of the importance of understanding that, before Chinook, we were already seeing a difference with French‑speaking African countries, especially in West Africa.

Is it possible that Chinook, by automating part of the work of IRCC officers, has crystallized an inequity that was already there?

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, Mr. Dangzalan.

[Lou Janssen Dangzalan]

Thank you, Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe. Your question is a very interesting one.

The way the artificial intelligence works over time is that we have the human harms framed in the automated system. As Mr. Tao has already mentioned, the problem with the way IRCC proceeds with this system is that there are no checks and balances, there is no quality audit as seen in the conduct and deployment of advanced analytics.

This is a problem because we don't have data from West Africa and, more importantly, we don't have data on how the Chinook system works.

As I mentioned earlier, all we've obtained in the last two months is email exchanges in the release of data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

So there are more questions than answers to the point you raised, Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe.

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

You mentioned it in your opening remarks. There seems to be a lack of clarity, a lack of transparency at IRCC right now. Actually, it may be the cause of many of the problems.

[Lou Janssen Dangzalan]

Indeed, it's a black box, Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe.

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

It keeps getting in the way of your work.

[Lou Janssen Dangzalan]

Yes, we are constantly fighting, especially when it comes to issues affecting people from West Africa. We don't have the statistics and data to know how applications are actually being processed.

We've had some clarification on the Chinook process, but we don't have much information on that right now.

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

Perfect. Thank you very much.

There's another subject I'd like to address. Six minutes goes by fast.

This question could be for Mr. Dangzalan and Mr. Fotang. I think Quebec spends $15 million on scholarships for international students. I think that's twice as much as what the rest of Canada spends on student scholarships. So we can see that Quebec believes in these students and is providing the necessary resources for them to come here. In the end, these students are turned away by Ottawa.

Last week, a member of this committee suggested that it might be Quebec's fault if there are so many refusals. This seems to me to be an inference that is not based on much.

I'd like to hear your comments on that.

[Lou Janssen Dangzalan]

Mr. Fotang, would you like to start?

[Christian Fotang]

I can go first, and I'll also bring in Jared to add to this.

I've talked to some students here at CASA and from the stories I've heard when they first came to study in Canada they actually went to Quebec first and they were doing some of their education in Laval before transferring to Alberta. They said that the distinction was clear, and the supports that they were afforded in Quebec were much different, more visible and helpful than what they were receiving in Alberta or in the rest of the country.

Jared might have more he can add to this as well.