Whoever came up with the idea of SDS was a genius and I thank them. They definitely helped those countries where SDS was implemented. That was a very good start. We need to make it better for everywhere to have a more dynamic SDS, rather than just certain states.
The only country that SDS impacted negatively was Vietnam. The reason was the majority of students coming from Vietnam were coming to our ESL classes because they didn't have their IELTS 6.0 or 6.5 band score, and after introducing SDS, the visa rates went from 90% to 40-some per cent. Besides Vietnam, I think everywhere else has a very good implementation of it.
As Ms. Amyot said, the training of the staff who are doing it is crucial. It all comes back to transparency. If the IRCC visa for the countries is transparent, not only does everyone know what they should upload, but the staff will know how to assess the students without any doubt.
I'm highly in favour of making the system more transparent and systematically better. To be honest, among all of the problems that humanity has, this is not a very hard problem. Technology can solve it very easily. I'm not saying it's an easy job, but human beings solve very large problems. If there is a will, we can do it.