Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 17th, 2022

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

When the Chinook tool is being used, are officers' working notes related to individual factual assessments retained or deleted from the system?

[Marian Campbell Jarvis]

Thank you for the question, Madam Chair.

I'll turn to Ms. Gill to respond directly to that.

[Pemi Gill]

Thank you.

In terms of the data for any officer review, whether they are doing so in Chinook, in GCMS or on paper, the determinations they've made and the notes of their decision are recorded in the global case management system. That is also where the refusal ground and the refusal letter are retained as well.

We do not delete any of the determinations of the officers or the rationale for their decision.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Do you delete the working notes?

[Pemi Gill]

Could you clarify what the working notes would be?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

They are the working notes related to an individual's application. I assume that when officials look at these applications, they take notes with respect to what they're receiving. Are there working notes kept in the system or are they deleted?

[Pemi Gill]

Thank you, Madam Chair, for the question.

Any notes that an officer takes that are in support of assessing the application and such are recorded in GCMS. Officers may write down something on the side, like on a piece of paper. However, if it is at all pertinent to the decision, it is in the system and that is also part of the refusal grounds.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Can the officials provide data on how many rejected applications have gone to the Federal Court since 2015, broken down by year, stream and country of origin, how many actually went to a hearing, and the outcome of the Federal Court decision?

[Marian Campbell Jarvis]

Thank you for the question, Madam Chair.

I'm not certain we have all of that data. I would need to confirm that with respect to the Federal Court. That may more properly be with the Department of Justice, so I'd have to confirm what we have, Madam Chair.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

All right. If your department doesn't have it, is it possible for you to request that information from Justice and provide it to the committee? The reason I ask is that this is critical information for us to assess the entire situation of what's going on. We have had witnesses indicate that, for example, in one area they looked into 26 applications that were rejected by IRCC and went to the Federal Court, and 23 of them were later accepted. Some of them did not even go to a hearing. I think it would be really important for us to get this information from the officials.

Ms. Campbell Jarvis told us at committee that there is an IRCC playbook used as a level of oversight for bias in IRCC. Could the officials table this playbook and also provide documentation or information on how it is being used by officials?

[Marian Campbell Jarvis]

Thank you, Madam Chair, for the question.

The playbook is something we have under development. It's still a draft. What we're using it for is a bit of a frame and a checklist to help guide how we use digital tools. It sets out a number of points for consideration, from bias to privacy and other considerations. We would be pleased to share that with the committee, keeping in mind that it's a working draft.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

The Chinook tool is able to truncate the information into a processing of somewhere around six minutes. That means that the official is not really reading all the documents. They are relying on flag words used by the Chinook tool—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting, Ms. Kwan. Your time is up. Maybe you will get an opportunity in the second round to ask the question.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Chair, maybe I can ask the officials to table those flag words for the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Okay. Thank you.

We will now proceed to Mr. Hallan for five minutes. Please begin.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the officials for once again being here with us.

Witnesses have testified multiple times now at this committee that the refusal rates for African students are really high and unacceptable. There is an undertone of racism and discrimination at IRCC.

Earlier in this meeting, the Minister of Immigration also indicated that Chinook is just a tool to organize case information. He mentioned something about it being a spreadsheet.

If an IRCC officer is not being influenced in their decision by Chinook, and if there are no algorithms in Chinook, then does the issue lie in IRCC officers being discriminatory or racist?

[Marian Campbell Jarvis]

Thank you very much for the question, Madam Chair.

Certainly, as the minister emphasized earlier this morning, racism and discrimination are something that the department is taking very seriously. Our staff are trained, and we have all taken hidden bias training. We also have efforts under way with the department-wide anti-racism task force, which is addressing work across recruitment and looking at our programs and policies and our service delivery as well. We also have a number of networks, including in Africa.

I would be pleased to turn to Ms. Gill for more details on how we are taking a pan-African approach to our work. We have a lot under way, and we are very committed to addressing systemic racism.

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

To the officials, with all due respect, the public has not seen any difference since that report was publicized, and neither were any documents given to the public stating that this issue has been tackled.

Have there been any changes since that report was made public? Were there any changes in how people were being trained? Is there anything that's been happening since that report was tabled?

[Marian Campbell Jarvis]

Thank you very much for the question.

As the minister noted this morning, the events around George Floyd were really a wake-up call for many of us. I think we were awake prior to that as well, but that was really a call to action. We set up an anti-racism task force, which you've been hearing about, and we've been tracking. The survey you're speaking about is the first one we've undertaken. That really is a baseline. That shows us that there are some concerns and some challenges.

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

Were there any results from that first report? If this anti-racism committee has been struck, were there any results? Have you seen any?

[Marian Campbell Jarvis]

In terms of results, there are a few things that we have put in place already, and we also have a number of areas where we've launched work.

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

Can we please have those tabled?

[Marian Campbell Jarvis]

Madam Chair, we are looking at our evaluation practices, our data frameworks and our policy frameworks. There is GBA+ analysis. We've developed a tool that we're piloting to help us assess systemic racism through our policy.

There are some areas that my colleagues in operations.... Perhaps Mr. Mills would like to allude to his space, operations, where we have also advanced significant work.

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

Can we have that information tabled? I want to move on to other questions. Can we please have that tabled, about what kinds of changes were made after that report was done, what's currently being worked on and how? I think that's very important to note.

When it comes to Chinook, we've heard over and over again that it seems like a very discriminatory kind of program. Specifically, were any consultations done at all, and with whom, before Chinook was implemented?

[Marian Campbell Jarvis]

I'll turn to Ms. Gill to give us some information on the Chinook system.