Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 10th, 2022

[Luc Bussières]

People do not always give the reasons for the refusals, but they do sometimes. I have never heard that reason but, yes, if I thought that it could be true, it would give me the shivers. I have talked to people I call immigration rules consultants. We have three of them in our little team. They have told me that they have heard rumours along those lines.

We tell the applicants that they have to explain why they want to do their studies in French outside Quebec. Our suggestion to them is that they say that, of course, they want to study in French, but they also want to develop their skills in English. When they come from Africa, our students often speak several languages, but English may not be one of them. So we ask them to explain that in the cover letters they have to write.

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

Thank you, Mr. Bussières.

Mr. Cimon, in previous meetings, the committee has learned that some international scholarship recipients have been refused a study permit for financial reasons. That also made me fall off my chair.

Have you heard that too? If so, are there any solutions?

[Yan Cimon]

That has certainly happened. One solution would be for a scholarship to be considered proof that a student has the financial resources needed to come to study in Canada. It's not only scholarships; we must also make sure that research assistantships and laboratory work can also be considered proof that a student has sufficient financial resources.

After all, those assistantships often paid from the grants that the researchers receive. Those resources come from the government and they provide the students with very good contracts.

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

Thank you very much.

I am going to take the 10 seconds I have left to thank you all. I feel that your testimony will make a major contribution to the report that will be written at the end of this study.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe.

We will now proceed to Ms. Kwan.

Ms. Kwan, you will have two and a half minutes, and then the panel will come to an end.

Go ahead, please.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

One of the issues that surfaced in this study from the other witnesses, based on an internal report done by IRCC, the Pollara report, was that there were attitudes of discrimination towards certain communities—and certainly to a great extent the African community. The government also proceeded to bring forward an artificial intelligence system, the Chinook system, whereby it would process these applications. Do you have any concerns that the Chinook AI system would have embedded within it potentially discriminatory or differential attitudes and would inject stereotyping into the processing? If so, what do you think should be done? Other witnesses have called for the Chinook system to be halted and for processing to be undertaken through a completely independent assessment.

Let me start with Mr. Cimon on this and then go down the line.

[Yan Cimon]

We do not have evidence in our data of what you are referring to, but what we see is that students from Africa, whether from north Africa or from sub-Saharan Africa, have seen their acceptance rates dwindle since 2012. We haven't seen such similar trends for students from France, for example, or from the rest of Europe, the United States or Oceania. The system we would like to have is a system that works. Whether it's Chinook or another system, we would like a system that's efficient, that's transparent and that helps students to get to their goal of getting a Canadian degree.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

I want to get to the other witnesses for a quick answer.

Mr. Malette.

[Alain-Sébastien Malette]

I also have no evidence on that.

I do have a couple of points. If you're going to see an increase in volume of demand for [Inaudible--Editor], then either the resources come physically in terms of people, or you have to implement a solution that's technology driven, but you definitely have to ensure that the solution is objective and treats all people fairly.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Bussières.

[Luc Bussières]

Behind an application like Chinook, there are algorithms and there is someone entering the data. Someone puts in the criteria and we need to know what they are. The problem is not that the criteria exist, it is rather that we do not know whether they are biased or not.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

With that, our round of questioning comes to an end.

On behalf of all the members of this committee, I really want to thank all three witnesses for their time and their important input as we continue our study on this topic.

If there is anything the witnesses feel they want to bring to the committee's notice, but because of the time were not able to discuss today, they can always send a written submission to the clerk of the committee and it will be circulated to all members. We will duly consider that as we continue the study and get to the stage of drafting our report.

Once again, thanks a lot for appearing before the committee.

With that, the meeting is adjourned.