Citizenship and Immigration committee  Especially when it comes to the processing of visas from Africa, my recommendation is for complete new training or some sort of review of staffing to figure out why the approval rates are as low as they are.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Oh, for sure it is. I'm critical of the fact that applications aren't being reviewed in their entirety, but I also recognize that it's impossible, given current staffing levels, for all applications to be reviewed in their entirety. I don't know what the solution is, and it's a c

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I for sure think that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the mandate should be similar to what the committee is studying now. I don't know how it would work in practice, but it should have the ability to directly interview employees at IRCC who may be able to shed more light on what is actually happening, as opposed to what the

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No. The refusal and approval rates based on visa office can be obtained through Access to Information Act requests. What I would like to see is somehow learning from the actual people who process these files how they are processing them in practice, and then Professor Christian,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As far as I can tell, Chinook is basically an Excel spreadsheet that allows for the bulk processing of applications. I have two main concerns with Chinook. Number one is whether or not it is enabling officers to quickly process files, possibly in bulk, without actually reading th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My overall criticism and concern with Chinook is perhaps actually best summarized by an ATIP response that I received from an IRCC manager in the United States. They considered using Chinook in the United States. Those visa offices in the United States tend to process criminal re

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Right now it's huge. The processing times stated on the IRCC website are inaccurate. The website itself says they're inaccurate. Again, only through Access to Information Act results have we learned that almost no caregiver files have been processed since 2019. Pretty much everyt

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The requirement that students study full time is one that was brought in around 2014. The department treats all designated learning institutions the same, as far as that requirement goes. For post-graduate work permits, which is the ability to work in Canada after graduating, stu

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I was thinking about the question, and I think the main cause of the backlog was just the department opening up several new applications and one large express entry draw. I think that was the main cause of the backlog. I don't, at least thinking about it now, view systemic racism

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't see any safeguards beyond the fact that individuals who may have experienced refusals can, of course, challenge them. However, there isn't anything like an ombudsperson, let's say, that exists where people can express concern if they do feel like they've experienced bad t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  What I'd like to add is, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, that the Pollara strategic insight report contains statements such as IRCC employees expressing concerns that AI will perpetuate systemic bias, and, as Professor Christian noted, there was a reference to at least one

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. First, I want to say that it is an honour to participate in your study of differential outcomes in Canadian visa officer decisions. When I look at the subtopics in this study, I can't help but think that a significant portion of the relevant data and information to