Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 8th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe. Your time is up.

Ms. Kwan, you have six minutes. Please proceed.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses.

With regard to the data, just based on that last answer, I wonder whether the comparison ought to be not so much about African francophone students with other African student applications but with other countries. I think that's where you see the discrepancies. But I'll leave that for a minute, because we explored that quite a lot with the other witnesses.

Ms. Amyot, there was an issue that was brought up by some of the previous witnesses. The Canadian government during the COVID period allowed for international students to start their study even though they could not be physically here in Canada. Of course, some of the students ended up not getting their visa permit to come and study, but they could not get a refund. They cannot continue their studies and they are already out-of-pocket.

I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that. Should the students actually be out-of-pocket or should they be refunded their tuition?

[Denise Amyot]

I'm not familiar with those specific cases. I can tell you, and I'll ask my colleague to add to this, that IRCC worked really hard to ensure that all the students who were making a request to have a student visa could have it in a timely fashion. But we know that it's not enough, especially for those coming in....

Andrew, do you want to address the specific questions from Ms. Kwan?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

My specific question is on the students who paid, followed the instructions from IRCC, started their studies and later had their visas rejected. They could not get a refund. Would the institutes be in support of students being refunded their tuition in those circumstances?

[Andrew Champagne, Manager, Mobility Programs, Colleges and Institutes Canada]

Over the course of the pandemic, there have been a lot of accommodations to the application process and the admission process for the institutions, and there were great efforts to align some of the timelines. There are typically periods where international students and all students can receive a full refund on their program. In some cases, there were absolutely challenges with students waiting a very long time to receive the second stage of their visa application process and, in some cases, they had already completed a full program from an academic perspective and had received that credential, so this certainly was an issue. Students were able to complete a good part of those programs online, in some cases entirely, and we worked with IRCC to try to push as much as we could on faster processing times and approvals on those applications.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you. I don't think you answered the question, though. Pushing IRCC moving forward and whether or not students [Technical difficulty—Editor] difference, and I think that's a major issue.

I wonder, Mr. Basiri, if you have anything to add to that.

[Martin Basiri]

Yes, there are some schools that didn't refund students, and their claim was that students came for education, not to come to Canada, and they did not refund. That being said, there were many schools that were accommodating, as Mr. Champagne talked about, and they did refund.

We see that it's not black and white among all the schools, and that's something that the schools themselves have to have oversight on. There are some cases that you've seen, like recently in Quebec where 2,000 students got their visas, came here, and there was no school, so their money is gone. It's a very big problem, and we are concerned, especially with private to public agreements that are happening, like public universities working with private universities, where many students can be hurt. We raised our concerns a lot with the schools and tried to stand on behalf of our students to get the best result. The majority of the schools are doing an amazing job and working from their hearts, but you can see cases where schools are not accommodating.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much.

I hear that a lot from Vancouver East with students who end up being out of pocket, and it's a huge hit, because it's a huge cost. In the end, they did not end up getting their degree or the course they wanted to complete.

I want to turn to the issue around dual intent for a minute, because the contradiction in that is significant. On the one hand, IRCC is saying to people that there's dual intent, and on the other hand, they're saying they're going to recheck your application because they think you want to stay.

What is your recommendation for the government to address this dual intent contradiction?

Go ahead, Ms. Amyot.

[Denise Amyot]

We should just drop it; it doesn't make sense. On the one hand, you spend money to market Canada as a country to come to study and to immigrate, and on the other hand, you refuse them if it's not obvious that they will go back. We should drop it. Our members have expressed frustration with recurring incidents like that, and it's confusing. We are a country that has a good reputation for its education and, unfortunately, this is not helping us to be competitive with other markets.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

We will proceed to our second round. We will have four minutes each for Mr. Hallan and Mr. Ali, then two minutes each for Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe and Ms. Kwan. We will start with Mr. Hallan.

Mr. Hallan, you have four minutes. Please proceed.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Madam Chair, Mr. Seeback will take my time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Go ahead, Mr. Seeback.

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

Thank you very much.

One of the things that we heard in our committee hearing on Tuesday, with respect to the underperforming approval numbers in various offices, is that a blind review in order to determine why the rejection rates are so high would be important.

I'm wondering if any of our panellists today would agree with that call to action, because I think it's a significant call to action and one that the government should take very seriously.

I'm opening that up to everyone on the panel today. Please let me know what your thoughts are.

[Denise Amyot]

For any process, it's important to do some audits to look at how it's going, and to do them in different parts of the world to assess the process and see if there is discrimination or bias, whether you use artificial intelligence or not.

I'll share a story with you very quickly. At one point, we had post-grad certificates that were very popular in our country for international students, and we began to see the numbers go down. It was refusal after refusal. We went to meet the agents in China and we asked them why. They were saying, “Why would someone who went to a university now go to a college?” We explained what the post-grad certificate was. In fact, Stats Canada issued a report a couple of months ago on how popular it is both with Canadian and international students and it's increasing. They just did not know, and what had happened was there was a change of staff during the summer, so the new group had not been apprised of this program that was so popular with international students.

What I get from that is that it's very important to share as much information as possible to establish good links between post-secondary institutions and IRCC to identify any of those irritants or things that don't make sense.

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

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Basiri.

[Martin Basiri]

It was also mentioned that the entire.... For example, in Africa, the visa rate is only 25% on average. It's not that we need to know why for questioning. We need to know what a student should do so the visa rate gets closer to 50% or 60%, which is closer to the rest of the world. It's crucial to have transparency, because then the students can do a better job.

The lack of transparency is hurting our universities and colleges, because they can't invest money, recruit people in Africa, travel to Africa and find students, and then all of a sudden students don't get the visa. We are wasting our own money in the majority of universities and colleges in Canada. We are losing taxpayers' money somewhere else because of non-transparency.

Without any doubt, especially for Africa and the Middle East, I highly recommend you come and say, “These are the additional things we want from these students,” not for the matter of checking and auditing, but for education; if students provide this, their visa chances will be higher.

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

These numbers have been getting worse in Africa since 2015. Were you aware that the rejection rate has been going up significantly since 2015?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting, Mr. Seeback. Your time is up.

We will now proceed to Mr. Ali. You will have four minutes for your round of questioning.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all witnesses.

My question is to Mr. Basiri. Canada offers the student direct stream in several countries. Its objective is a faster processing time. It has financial requirements, such as having paid the first year of tuition fees and having a GIC of $10,000 that will provide funds during the period of study.

How useful has this expedited stream been for students wanting to study in Canada? That's number one. I have a couple more questions, which you can answer all at once.

In your opinion, has it facilitated the entry of students from certain parts of the world over others?

Third, does Australia have a similar dedicated immigration system for some, if not all, of its international students?

Can you elaborate on that, please?

[Martin Basiri]

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.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[Martin Basiri]

For example, for all intents and purposes, it has been an issue for years. Once and for all, we all have to shake hands, hug each other, and finish this. It just requires—

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Mr. Basiri, I'm running out of time.

My next question is to Ms. Nord.

The policy resolution adopted by the Chamber of Commerce suggests removal of any restriction on the number of hours an international student can work off campus.

Isn't there a concern that studies will suffer, because of the student working too many hours?

[Leah Nord]

Is that a concern for domestic students? That would be my response.

Domestic students aren't restricted to hours they can work off campus, so I'm not sure why international students would have that restriction upon them.

I would argue in the bigger picture, as well, it helps them network and acclimatize. It helps them financially support themselves, as is done by Canadian students. Appreciating the concern, it would have to be for all students, and not just international students.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you.