:
I call the meeting to order. Good morning, everyone.
Welcome to meeting number 11 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Today, the committee is beginning its study on differential outcomes in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada decisions.
Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. If interpretation is lost, please inform me immediately and we will ensure that interpretation is properly restored before resuming the proceedings. The “raise hand” feature at the bottom of the screen can be used at any time if you wish to speak or alert the chair.
Before we begin, I have a few administrative matters to raise with the committee. First of all, we have received a request from OCASI, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, to appear on this study. OCASI is an umbrella organization for the immigrant and refugee-serving sector in Ontario and is the largest of its kind in Canada.
Is it the will of the committee to extend an invitation to OCASI to appear on the study of differential outcomes?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: We can extend an invitation, Madam Clerk, to OCASI to appear on the study of differential outcomes.
There is one more thing before we get into the witnesses for today. We received a large volume of useful data and evidence during the committee's recent study of recruitment and acceptance rates of foreign students. The analysts have confirmed that pertinent data could inform our current study on differential outcomes.
Is it the will of the committee that the evidence and documentation received by the committee during the study of recruitment and acceptance rates of foreign students be taken into consideration by the committee during the study of differential outcomes in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada decisions?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: Now we will begin our study on differential outcomes in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada decisions.
It is my pleasure to introduce the first witnesses of this important study.
In our first panel, we have Steven Meurrens, an immigration lawyer coming here as an individual. We have Jennifer Miedema, executive director of Remember Ministries. We have Dr. Gideon Christian, president of the African Scholars Initiative.
I would like to welcome all the witnesses who are appearing before the committee today.
I would like to take a few moments for the benefit of the witnesses. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you are ready to speak, you can click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. As a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair.
Interpretation in this video conference will work very much like in a regular committee meeting. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute.
With that, all of the witnesses will have five minutes for opening remarks. After those opening remarks, we will proceed to rounds of questioning.
We will begin with Mr. Steven Meurrens, immigration lawyer.
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 these topics has only been obtained through Access to Information Act results that private individuals have shared online.
Given this, I want to focus my presentation today on transparency.
The only way that one can properly review whether there is systemic bias in Canada's immigration programs is if the relevant information is easily available to the public. I want to suggest a few ways to achieve this.
First, prior to 2016, IRCC posted quarterly processing times and approval rates for all of its programs, by visa office. The information showed what actually had occurred at a given office and was very useful. IRCC stopped doing this after 2015. The government's website currently says that they stopped doing this because IRCC wanted to post only global information. While IRCC may have a goal that all applications are processed the same regardless of visa office, I think everyone knows that this is not the case in practice. I would suggest that IRCC bring back the visa office specific quarterly updates.
Second, IRCC should publish as downloadable PDFs Access to Information Act results that pertain to internal manuals, visa office specific training guides on assessing the genuineness of a marriage, and other similar documents. Right now it is possible for the public to search the titles of previous completed requests, but then the individuals have to wait for them to be emailed, which can take several weeks. Again, I don't think most of the public knows that this is possible. The British Columbia government, meanwhile, publishes as downloadable PDFs all non-individual specific, previously disclosed freedom of information releases. This approach is a model for transparency that I believe IRCC should follow.
Third, IRCC should, in my opinion, publish detailed explanations and reports of how its artificial intelligence triaging and new processing tools work in practice. Almost everything public to date has been obtained through Access to Information results that are heavily redacted and which I don't believe present the whole picture. For example, in late 2020 it was revealed through ATIP that all visitor visa applications from China and India have gone through an AI triage since at least 2018. It is not clear how this AI triage works.
I shared an online internal IRCC document from 2018 about the triage of these applications from India and China. It stated that while AI triaged files, visa officers were not told why a file was triaged a certain way, so that officers still reviewed applications. The document then had a 2020 footnote that stated that officers are now provided with key facts about the client to reduce the time spent searching for information. The implication seems to be that the department does not want officers reading entire applications, and there needs to be more transparency about this.
IRCC presents the Chinook processing tool and to a lesser extent AI as just an Excel spreadsheet and a change in process. However, the Pollara Strategic Insight final report says that an IRCC employee, or employees, expressed “Concern that increased automation of processing will embed racially discriminatory practices in a way that will be harder to see over time.” It is not clear why an Excel spreadsheet would do that. It would be great to hear more from the person or people who said this to learn what they are seeing on the ground.
Now, their concerns and mine may not be fully accurate, but in the absence of increased transparency, concerns like this are only growing.
To conclude, in order for this committee to provide ongoing, meaningful insight and oversight into whether there are differential outcomes in decisions based on race and region, the department needs to be more transparent and publish information that reflects what is actually happening rather than what the government's or the department's goals are.
Thank you.
:
Good morning, Madam Chair and committee members.
I am thankful to be able to join you today to speak on behalf of the refugees I work with and serve.
I am the founder and director of Remember Ministries, a charitable organization focused on sponsoring refugees to Canada, particularly those who have been persecuted for their faith and religious activities. I have been very involved for the past seven years in sponsoring refugees through Canada's private refugee sponsorship program and in helping others do the same.
I want to say that the private refugee sponsorship program is an amazing and worthwhile program. I know many people in Canada who are enormously thankful to be empowered to help refugees in this way. It harnesses the generosity of Canadians and encourages the spirit of welcome in our communities. It makes our country stronger.
I know the committee is studying systemic discrimination leading to differential outcomes in IRCC decisions. I can't speak about any of the technology used in the application process; I can only speak about what I know. When I've asked newcomers and refugees if they had experienced any overt discrimination from the IRCC or visa office workers, they all said no.
However, that is not to say that there is not systemic discrimination within IRCC processes or in how our government chooses to prioritize certain refugee populations over others.
This seems to be the case because of the expediting of some populations of refugees and the long wait times for others. Allocation of resources tells you where priorities are placed or who favoured populations are. Resources do not seem to go towards the processing of private refugee sponsorships, which leads one to believe that those refugees are not a priority.
Current processing times for privately sponsored refugees in Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and South Africa are 31 to 37 months. For refugees in Malaysia and Thailand, it's 37 months. For those in Pakistan, it's 38 months. For those in Lebanon, it is 46 months—almost four years. That's a country where the citizens are experiencing terrible fuel, medicine and food shortages, so imagine what it is like for refugees there.
For those refugees who go through the proper procedure and are fortunate enough to have sponsors in Canada providing finances and support upon their arrival here, it will take them three to four years for their paperwork to be processed.
I don't have words in this short testimony to explain how damaging these wait times are. Members of these refugee families die while waiting. Children are not in school during crucial years of their lives.
Of course, one will naturally compare these wait times with the situation for Ukrainian refugees being welcomed now through an expedited visa process, and with Afghan refugees, some of whom the IRCC expedited applications for as they tried to meet their promised numbers. We remember the prioritization of Syrian refugees when the war broke out. Please do not think that I am being critical of expediting those people in immediate danger and need. None of us would argue against helping these refugees in the most compassionate and efficient way.
What I question is the reallocation of resources away from other refugees who have been waiting for months and years. I question reducing the numbers of other refugees being welcomed in the same year so that more of one population can be welcomed.
What is needed is the ability to find new resources to help people in the current crisis and to never put some people in a favoured category over others. We need to increase the total number of refugees welcomed when there is a crisis, not renege on welcoming others whose applications are already waiting.
Eritreans have been fleeing one of the most repressive regimes on the planet for years. It is a continuous flow of refugees, yet a special program is never put in place for them. A special program has never been put in place for any African refugee group that I know of.
It is good for this committee to examine what is happening in all manner of processes within the IRCC. It is good to ask if Canada's value of equality is being properly represented by government mandates to the IRCC and by the IRCC systems themselves. Vulnerable people are vulnerable people. It shouldn't be a popularity contest between refugees.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair and members of this committee, for inviting the African Scholars Initiative, ASI-Canada, to make this submission on your study.
I will limit my opening remarks to two main issues: first, the differential outcomes on study visa decisions by IRCC relating to applications from Africa; and second, the growing use of artificial intelligence technology by IRCC in visa processing.
Data on study visa refusals from IRCC clearly show that countries in sub-Saharan Africa are most adversely impacted by differential outcomes on study visa decisions by IRCC. The Pollara report revealed that systemic bias, discrimination and racism account for this, from outright reference to African countries as “the dirty 30” by IRCC visa officers to outright branding of Nigerians as corrupt and untrustworthy.
IRCC study visa policies have been designed in ways that make it ever more difficult for people from Africa to be able to secure study visas to pursue education in Canada. In my appearance before this committee on February 8, 2022, I highlighted these discriminatory policies by comparing two visa application programs, the student direct stream, or SDS, and the Nigerian student express, or NSE, especially the differential or discriminatory financial requirements under the NSE program.
In addition, I will also note the language requirement under the NSE program, which requires a Nigerian study visa applicant to undertake English-language proficiency to prove to the visa officer that they are proficient in the English language. This requirement is imposed notwithstanding that English is the only official language in Nigeria. It is the official language of instruction in all formal academic institutions in Nigeria. Foreign students from Nigeria are exempted from English-language proficiency by all academic institutions in Canada, but not by IRCC. These subtle, biased, discriminatory and differential study visa requirements inevitably result in adverse differential outcomes in decisions, not just for Nigeria but for Africa.
My second submission relates to the growing use of computer software and artificial intelligence technology by IRCC in visa processing. ASI-Canada is not opposed to some use of AI technologies by IRCC. IRCC has in its possession a great deal of historical data that can enable it to train AI and automate its visa application processes, but there are serious concerns here. External study of IRCC, especially the Pollara report, has revealed system bias, racism and discrimination in IRCC processing of immigration applications. Inevitably, this historical data in possession of IRCC is tainted by this same systematic bias, racism and discrimination.
The problem is that the use of this tainted data to train any AI algorithm will inevitably result in algorithmic racism—racist AI making immigration decisions. As an assistant professor of AI and law at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law, I have spent the last three years researching algorithmic racism, and I can confidently state that the concerns raised here are legitimate and real. Any use of AI technology by IRCC should be subject to external scrutiny. IRCC should be subject to the oversight that will ensure and enhance transparency and fairness in the use of AI.
In conclusion, we recommend an independent oversight of IRCC in two ways: one, an independent ombudsperson to oversee decisions of IRCC visa officers; and two, the establishment of an independent body of experts to oversee IRCC's use of advanced analytics and artificial intelligence technology in visa processing.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions on the issues that I have raised, as well as any other questions you may have on differential outcomes in IRCC decisions.
:
Thank you for your comments. I appreciate that.
I don't deal with students, so I can't address what you said about the French-speaking students. I am helping refugees from all over the world connect with communities, volunteers and churches in Canada that can sponsor them.
In terms of the issues I see in the work that I do, certainly it's these long wait times that are extraordinarily difficult for refugees. It is a sacred thing to raise the hopes of a refugee. Once they are raised, once you submit their application, for them to go through months, and then a year or two years, without any contact from the visa office, and to have to wait three years, or close to that time, for an interview—it is very, very difficult for their mental health. It affects their physical health. It affects their family dynamics, marriages and so many things.
One of the issues we had as well was that one of my refugees was accepted just before COVID hit. We had to place that on hold. He was an Eritrean refugee in South Sudan. We didn't hear any communication. I had to ask my member of Parliament to please check on the case. For months we still didn't know. We found out in late 2021 that his medical had expired in February 2021, but nobody had told him. Nobody had told anybody. That visa office didn't communicate. He was told to try to get a new medical, but there are no panel-approved physicians in South Sudan. We have been in a difficult situation, with no medicals provided and yet an expired medical.
There are sometimes things that make you feel like there's some disorganization at the visa office level, a lack of communication with the refugees themselves, and COVID-caused chaos on many levels, but I think this disorganization exists even outside of that. I would just ask that more resources be put toward visa offices and more communication be given to refugees, or an ability to sign in online and see the status of their application.
An ombudsperson would be very helpful when there is an issue. We don't really have anybody we can go to when there's a problem at a visa office. We just have to wait.
Thank you.
[Translation]
My second question is for Mr. Meurrens.
When a student is granted a visa, they must come here to study full-time. If they subsequently study part-time, they lose their student status.
However, not all institutions define what constitutes full-time studies in the same way. Can you give us more information on this issue?
There is another issue: How can the department be sure that students will stay and study here?
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for being with us today for this extremely important study.
I will get right to it because I don't have a lot of time.
Mr. Christian, I really enjoyed your opening remarks. I have a question for you.
The department seems to be having trouble talking about racism at IRCC. Instead, they use the term unconscious bias when referring to IRCC staff. However, when one learns that people are referring to African countries as the 30 corrupt nations, or that certain managers are saying that Latinos come to Canada just to get social insurance benefits, one realizes that we're far from unconscious bias.
Do you agree with me about that, Mr. Christian?
:
I agree with you wholeheartedly, Mr. Christian. My mother always says that if you want to solve a problem, first and foremost you have to be able to identify it. You have just demonstrated it once again, and I thank you for that.
In your opening remarks, you offered two solutions. You talked about an independent ombudsperson and an independent panel of experts that could look into specific issues, respectively.
What do you think of the proposed ombudsperson position at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada? It would bring your two suggestions together under the ombudsperson's purview. If a position like this were created in the department, people would be protected.
Do you feel it's a good idea?
:
The problem [
Technical difficulty—Editor] advanced analytics has been an absolute lack of transparency. Most of the information we know about these technologies is information that has been obtained through access to information requests. It's not information that was made available by IRCC.
Now, I can't even say exactly what Chinook is. We're told it's a computer software—an Excel sheet—but I have seen cases where some immigration lawyers did Access to Information requests and some aspects of Chinook were actually exempted from disclosure under section 15(1) of the Access to Information Act. Section 15 deals with international affairs and defence.
The problem I'm having then is, if Chinook is an ordinary Excel spreadsheet, why are they withholding disclosure of some information on Chinook based on section 15 of the Access to Information Act, which deals with international affairs and defence?
I think there is more to Chinook than we know and than IRCC is willing to disclose. That is the transparency issue we are talking about. If this matter is actually covered by national defence, let's have an independent body of experts analyze this and, of course, know what should be made available to the public and what should be withheld.
IRCC seems to be the judge and jury in their own matters and that lacks transparency.
:
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 rehabilitation applications or visas from people from a multitude of countries.
The United States program manager said that their office is not suitable for Chinook use, given each application presents unique circumstances that need to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. The manager later said that unlike visa offices, their caseload was not homogenous.
I think my concern with Chinook being used in some countries is that it's clear that IRCC views applications from China or India, for example, as being homogenous and people don't necessarily need to have their individual circumstances reviewed, unlike, say, people from the United States—at least as per that program manager.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Meurrens, this committee has specific powers respecting the ability to send for documents. Those powers are completely unfettered and that's a core principle of our constitutional reality. In the midst of hearing about the problems of transparency, the committee actually has within its power to take some steps to concretely help you solve them.
I've just been wordsmithing on the fly here a possible draft motion that we could consider at a later date. I wonder if you can clarify specifically the data you want because then we can request and publish that data as a committee.
It sounds like you're looking for rates of acceptance and refusal broken down by country and subnational regions of application and what kinds of visas are being applied for, dating back to 2015.
Is that correct? Is there any other information that you would like us to send for and publish?
Just because of time limitations, what I'd ask all our witnesses to do, then, is to send a follow-up in writing, the specific information, whether it's Chinook keywords or whatever it is, that the committee should request and publish so that we can ensure that you have the information going forward and we have that information as well.
Professor Christian, Mr. Meurrens and Ms. Miedema, would you maybe nod to confirm that you're able to do that in the next little while, to send us that information and we will work on getting a motion adopted at this committee with respect to that?
Okay. Thank you.
I will say as well, even information that's available through ATIP. Given issues of redaction and access, I think it's still worthwhile for the committee to include some of that information as part of a document request motion in order to publish that on our website and have ease of access.
Ms. Miedema, thank you for the incredible work you're doing with respect to refugees and for your testimony today. It has been an ongoing frustration for me in talking to those involved with private sponsorship, the piling on of challenges, of red tape, of additional burdens. It seems as though continually the approach is how do we squeeze private sponsors, instead of empowering them and facilitating the great work that they do.
It also seems to me that the fairest system and the way we welcome the most refugees is for the government to spend as much of its time, energy and resources as possible in getting behind private sponsors, including through more joint sponsorship programs. If we moved away from this public and private model separately and put all those resources behind joint sponsorship, we could welcome more refugees, and those who are coming as refugees would benefit from being welcomed by a community. Privately sponsored refugees have a huge advantage in terms of coming into existing communities of love and support whereas government-sponsored refugees have a level of financial support but don't have the kind of psychosocial support that comes with being part of a community.
Do you share those ideas and concerns, and could you speak more to how we should be shifting from the current mentality, which is piling barriers on private sponsors, and talk about the things we can do to empower, strengthen and get more people saying yes to being involved in this work?
:
Yes. Thank you for your comments. You are bang on in everything you're saying.
There are some opportunities for partnership between government and private groups with the blended visa office-referred sponsorships, which are great, but really we need more spots.
There are many private sponsors ready to submit applications every year, and everybody is always fighting for spots. I don't know why this is, because private people are bringing their own funds and willing to provide that settlement support for the first year, so yes, you're right about more sponsors.
:
As artificial intelligence is being used by IRCC now, based on internal documents obtained, we are getting to the stage where IRCC is using AI to automate visa refusals, so we have a case of block processing of visa applications. Steven made reference to this earlier, the lack of individuality to this area. There is a lack of individuality in treating applications. Applications seem to be homogeneous, which is not often the case.
My major concern with the use of this technology by IRCC is the fact that to train an AI algorithm, you need huge amounts of data. IRCC inevitably has data from a historical collection of data. The problem is that, historically, you have been collecting data that seems to be biased against a particular group of people or a particular continent. When you use that data to train an AI algorithm, what the AI algorithm does is simply regurgitate those biases. This time it's even more difficult, because it becomes more difficult to be able to identify this problem.
The problem we have here, which I'm trying to highlight, is that if IRCC uses these data to train AI algorithms—which I believe it is doing now—without adequately trying to address the bias issue, we are going to have a situation where the problem we have identified in the Pollara report is now embedded into technology and it becomes more difficult to identify.
This will continue to perpetuate the discrimination we have highlighted against people from the sub-Saharan African continent, especially with study visa applications coming from that part of the world. That is of great concern to us at ASI Canada.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the witnesses participating in today's meeting. We will benefit from their expertise as we draft this report and make our recommendations. I thank them very much.
I'd like to ask a question to Mr. Meurrens, who is an immigration lawyer.
I'm going to hypothesize. Is it possible that underfunding of IRCC offices that have to process applications is resulting in faster and less thorough processing of applications?
Let's take the example of an officer working in an understaffed IRCC office. If they see the caseload growing every day, could that influence their decisions? The decision to refuse an application may be made quickly, while the decision to accept one may take longer.
Could understaffing be part of the problem?
:
I call the meeting to order.
For this panel, I would like to welcome Beba Svigir, chief executive officer for the Calgary Immigrant Women's Association.
We are also joined by Anila Lee Yuen, president and chief executive officer for the Centre for Newcomers.
Our third witness for this panel is Fatima Filippi, executive director for the Rexdale Women's Centre.
Thank you for taking time to appear before the committee.
All the witnesses will have five minutes for their opening remarks and then we will proceed to our round of questioning. We will begin with Ms. Svigir, the chief executive officer for the Calgary Immigrant Women's Association.
You will have five minutes for your opening remarks. You can please begin.
The Calgary Immigrant Women’s Association has worked with a total of about 23 officers over the years. I believe about 27% of them were racialized. We believe that as a settlement agency, the highest level of helpfulness that we can provide in relation to the study is the extent of differential outcomes for our racialized clients.
The IRCC survey report indicates that many of the surveyed employees were in Canada by virtue of immigration, and were grateful to be able to contribute to the work and mandate of IRCC. This is in line with our agency's experiences as well. Over 90% of our clients are racialized, as are 76% of our staff and leadership team. By extension, when working with CIWA, IRCC is working with approximately 12,000 racialized immigrant women annually. Our statements on differential outcomes are based on decisions around program funding, client service and policy.
On the issue of discriminatory rules for processing immigration applications from some countries that are different than for others, this has been observed and voiced by some CIWA clients on study permits through different streams. The student direct stream takes up to 20 days for the currently listed 14 countries on IRCC's web page, while processing times under the regular study permit can take from anywhere between 90 and 300 days.
We have observed that clients who come on a student visa from Nigeria typically do not bring their children with them, as there is a higher rate of refusal when children are included in their study permit application. They access CIWA for supports with applications to bring their families to join them after they themselves make their way to Canada. As a result of such delays caused by differential processing times, we have to deal with additional stressors arising from delayed family reunification, including parenting challenges and family conflict, both of which have far-reaching effects on families.
An extreme example around the notion of regional experiences is the case of a Sudanese CIWA client who sought private refugee sponsorship for her daughter and eight children. The application has been in the queue in Nairobi since December 2020, and will cost the private sponsoring group $80,000. The sponsoring group already spent over $15,000 last year on food, medicine, a mud hut home and schooling for children during that wait period.
While some VISA offices in other countries processed applications throughout COVID, Kenya's office was closed. Private refugee sponsorship, a point of Canadian pride, will falter under these high costs caused by uneven times.
An example of differential funding decisions by IRCC is the federal government's decision at the end of 2018 to invest in specialized employment programs for racialized immigrant women across Canada. Agencies were invited to apply for a 28-month project to facilitate employment bridging programs. After the federal election in 2019, the same government that enacted the funding decided to rescind the funding decision, cutting the project after only 16 months. Widely perceived as an election promise to attract voters and capture the ears of newcomers at that time, we felt that this decision could be perceived as hugely differential. Due to our capacity and other funding supports that we had to access at that time, we did complete the project in line with our original time frame of 28 months.
In relation to the increased automation of processing embedding racially discriminatory practices in a way that will be harder to see over time, this is really close to our heart, because we believe we know a lot about the risks associated with this. High-level decisions by IRCC in relation to service delivery improvements directly affect service provider organizations and clients. These decisions should be executed after formal consultation and research with stakeholder engagement. Unanticipated outcomes need to be heard and mitigated. Negative outcomes of rushed automation decisions will definitely affect highly barriered newcomers, including those who are racialized.
We recognize that process- and analytics-driven approaches are necessary to deal with backlogs. However, automation in processing vulnerable populations should be called an improvement only if it has well-defined exceptions—
I really appreciate being here today from the traditional land of Treaty No. 7 in Calgary, Alberta, whose Blackfoot name is Mohkinstsis.
I am the president and chief executive officer at the Centre for Newcomers. I have five points that I want to bring up in relation to racism, discrimination and systemic barriers in terms of IRCC. Although some really wonderful things have happened over the last few years, including our indigenous education for newcomers as a priority, and more priority on LGBT+ and racialized communities and other things, I thought I would use this time to speak to some of the things that we see as barriers and where we would like to see some changes.
The first is what is true and also perceived in the general public as differential actions for displaced peoples that are dependent on where they come from. We see this much more broadly, especially right now, where we are still reeling, as settlement agencies, from the acceptance of and assistance to Afghan refugees. That has been, of course, as it is for all displaced people in war, very difficult in terms of that, in terms of the community—but we're seeing much easier ways of coming to Canada for Ukraine and for Ukrainian citizens. That is problematic in what we say to our clients and what we say to the community in terms of why there was a difference between racialized communities—whether they were Syrian, whether they were Iraqi, whether they were coming from Colombia in South America or from anywhere else, or Punjabi if they were coming potentially as political refugees from India—and all these different places that are racialized.
As much as we do support the Ukrainian community, and support every community, there is a huge difference. The only one we can see visibly is race. That is really problematic in terms of the work we do.
The other piece that's related to that is differential treatment based on immigration status. We have a very legal mechanism of claiming asylum once people come to Canada, yet they are not allowed any of the services or any of the settlement support while they are going through their process of becoming permanent residents. This also has detrimental effects on their longevity. Many studies show that children and grandchildren will continue to be in that trauma state because their parents did not receive the kinds of services...until a few years in, when they received their refugee status. That is also problematic.
We see this also in terms of what we're going to do with those Ukrainians. Currently, they are being marked as temporary residents. What are we going to do if they seek asylum and they choose to stay, or if they cannot go back? What kinds of services will we be able to offer? Currently, IRCC does not allow us as settlement agencies to offer services to temporary residents or refugee claimants. This is problematic in terms of how these communities are going to be able to get assistance.
One of the things we learned during the COVID response was that we were the group that was responsible for a 99% vaccination rate, the first in Canada, and most certainly in Alberta, from the lowest to the highest in northeast Calgary, which is a highly racialized newcomer community space. We were able to prove that for people in times of crisis, whatever that crisis is, even if they speak English or French fluently, you provide them with dignity when you provide them with the ability to speak in their first language. That is another thing that we think is extremely important in terms of all the services that are offered. They should not only be in English and French. We should make a concerted effort, especially in times of crisis, to be able to give first language support.
One thing we saw through COVID was that IRCC officers were not designated as essential workers. The offices were closed. If they had been essential workers, we wouldn't have seen such a disparity between the services offered for newcomers and immigrants as compared with other communities.
Finally, in maybe the last decade, funding has typically excluded ethnocultural community groups. In terms of being natural supports to our community, we think we really need to look at more funding options for ethnocultural community groups.
Thank you.
:
Thank you for having me here today. I'm a little bit nervous, so please bear with me.
I just wanted to talk on a little bit of a more personal level about my experience with the organization and IRCC.
Our organization was established in 1978. We assist newcomer, immigrant and refugee women and their families to overcome the challenges they face when integrating into Canada. Last year, we provided services to well over 8,000 individuals during the pandemic.
I would also like to state that since 2019, I've been the co-chair of the women's caucus of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, which is an umbrella organization of immigrant-serving organizations in Ontario.
Like many of our sector colleagues, we were angered and saddened by the findings of the Pollara report, yet as much as we are angered, we are not surprised by the findings.
I would like to start off by relating some of my organization's experience in working with racialized women's communities and IRCC.
We have experienced differential treatment in budget negotiations. Ms. Yuen talked a little bit about funding options being more open and that's one of the things we wanted to talk about. As a women's organization working with racialized women's communities, we have been asked to provide additional details that other sector providers have not had to provide. An example is a detailed breakdown of administrative budget costs when other sector providers were not required to do so. We were also asked for this information to justify the administrative percentage being requested under IRCC even though the contracts clearly state that we can claim up to 15%.
We now comprehend that if the settlement officer was from a racialized community—in this case this officer was—they needed to provide additional due diligence in order to substantiate their recommendation and to provide proof of effectively managing our contract agreement and our file.
I have heard from one settlement officer who has now left the department that upon returning to the office from visiting my agency, he was chided and was asked how it felt to work with a women's organization, as though our portfolio was somehow demeaning and of lesser value in comparison to managing other portfolios.
It is concerning for us how we see that racialized staff are being passed over for promotions and having to work harder to justify their decisions. Their decisions are being questioned when working with sector service organizations. Thus, we are equally concerned for how this reflects on decisions on how racialized communities are being allowed into Canada.
I have heard from our agency settlement counsellors that our racialized clients must undergo additional steps in order to fulfill the requirements in the application process. I know Dr. Christian spoke at length about that in the Chinook process.
We've seen a great many clients being requested to do DNA testing for family members, which is a costly process that is often difficult to obtain in some countries. It causes extraordinary delays. Security clearances are also expensive and difficult to obtain. Specific countries having visa requirements is an additional financial burden.
We have also now started to hear from our female Muslim clients that they are being asked questions of sexual nature with regard to their relationship with male spouses and to provide proof of marriage under the family sponsorship program.
We ask ourselves whether these procedures and questions are being asked of all potential newcomers and immigrants or whether it is only a select few.
I would also like to take this opportunity to present some recommendations in my role as the co-chair of the OCASI women's caucus.
First, we recommend a comprehensive racial equity review of Canada's immigration and refugee system, including legislation, regulations, policies and practices.
Legislation, regulation and policies are written carefully with a view to eliminating racial bias. Meanwhile, even racial bias regulations can have a disproportionate impact on certain people and communities because of a deeply rooted global history of colonialism and patriarchy, the impact of the transatlantic slave trade and genocide, as well as the ongoing colonialism and systemic racism within Canada.
For example, Canada has visa requirements for countries primarily in the global south. These are also countries with racialized populations. The visa requirement makes family visits from parents and grandparents and family reunification more difficult for racialized residents of Canada.
In practice, IRCC has reportedly hyper-scrutinized family sponsorship applications primarily from racialized applicants. We've heard that from Dr. Christian. Spousal sponsorship applications for India are hyper-scrutinized for the existence of marriage fraud. Child sponsorship applications for China and many African countries are scrutinized for genuine parent-child relationships. Applicants are often asked to provide a DNA proof of relationships.
While laws, regulations and policies are neutral, their application is subject to bias and prejudice. These concerns were highlighted by the IRCC employees in the 2021 focus group and IRCC employee groups.
Two, we recommend collection of data disaggregated by race, ethnicity and faith, as well as gender and other demographic factors on which IRCC currently collects data.
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Sure. I won't go into great detail. I'll just give the recommendations and not the background.
We recommend the collection of data disaggregated by race, ethnicity and faith, as well as gender and other demographic factors on which IRCC currently collects data.
Third, we recommend an independent review and ongoing oversight of IRCC's Chinook system, and any future AI or technology use for pre-screening and processing, as well as full sharing of case-processing data disaggregated by race, ethnicity and faith, as well as other demographics currently collected by IRCC.
Lastly, we recommend that anti-racism training with a gender-based lens be mandatory for all employees; the establishment of an independent, adequately resourced ombudsperson office for IRCC; and anti-racism legislation for Canada, which would give the anti-racism secretariat a legislative foundation and strengthen its work and as part of the act subject all government legislation and regulations to a racial equity review similar to what was undertaken under the Canadian Gender Budgeting Act of 2018.
I first want to say thank you to all our wonderful witnesses who are here today. I really want to reinforce how extraordinary your work has been, and actually quite challenging, I know, in particular because of COVID impacting you and all your staff. On behalf of this committee, I want to say thank you for everything you've done.
My question is for the three of you, and I would certainly like to have this conversation. It's very specific to when you're working with your clients. Does anything stand out as recurring barriers to racialized newcomers specifically, and how can IRCC address these barriers?
Just very quickly, in terms of recurring barriers, one of the things we saw, of course, recurring through COVID, was really around a disconnect among the multiple levels of government. Whenever we have anything coming from IRCC, because of the way our system is built in terms of the federation, there needs to be a really big connection with the provincial governments as well. When that isn't necessarily there and there isn't as much communication happening, this potentially can become a big issue.
In terms of barriers, we see not enough language support specifically for newcomer communities and racialized communities. Also, there's a lack of infrastructure, like I said, specifically when people are brand new and they are not permanent residents yet, even though we do have multiple pathways and we know they're going to become permanent residents.
I will leave it to my colleagues to continue.
When it comes to barriers and racialized populations, our agency can add gender to the context of this discussion. I'm quite sure that Fatima can support it, and Anila, obviously; they also serve women. When you add those three components and connect them with the value of equity and fairness we should be utilizing when supporting our clients, from the funding decisions to all of us who work with clients directly, you can appreciate that there is a huge quantity issue and quality issue when working with racialized immigrant women.
When I talk about quantity, I'm talking about the number of services that exist and that are being funded by IRCC specifically for women. In line with that, there is the quality component, which is the value of equity and customized adjusted services, from child care to all kinds of other issues, including family violence issues that we have been increasingly dealing with. There is the fact that there are a limited number of organizations that exist to provide services for the most vulnerable women who are racialized as well, and the full understanding of that fairness component that every individual IRCC brings to Canada should deserve and should receive as part of their successful integration and how that affects the well-being of those children they bring up to be responsible citizens of this country.
That issue in itself speaks about a huge lack of attention to the gender issues. Globally, all women and in particular [Technical difficulty--Editor] on IRCC funding decisions. We are probably the biggest settlement agency with a gender-specific focus in Canada, and we have tons of different bridging programs that support immigrant women for equitable employment. We have offered those program models' outcome measurement frameworks—vetted programs models—to IRCC to spread across Canada, so that all the other centres can use those programs. However, very few of them have been reciprocated.
What can you do with 30 clients you serve through any of those bridging programs when there are 3,000 women who should have access to those programs, and that's maybe even in the city of Calgary—forget about other cities?
So race, coupled with gender, is a big issue that has been very poorly dealt with by IRCC historically.
I will allow Fatima to....
I think one of the concerns we've had for the women-serving community is that there are no disaggregated data on the level of funding for women's organizations across Canada. We've been asking this of IRCC for the last two years, almost three years, and still don't have it.
When you talk about the differential treatments in terms of funding, for example, the funding cap at 15% for administrative costs in an organization doesn't go very far when you have a budget of a $1-million grant. When you have an organization that has a $10-million budget under IRCC and 15% administrative costs, you can see the difference in how that's going to impact on the capacity of the organization to be effective in addressing the administration of the contract and being able to serve clients, because the dollars are going to be able to serve clients.
What I'd like to add is on the digital divide that we've seen existing, particularly with women who are in the lower-income brackets in my community. We are having high-speed Internet access to services that are available through the processing program, on the applications, or even, for example, citizenship testing, and we've had to create a special citizenship—
:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Ms. Yuen, Ms. Svigir and Ms. Filippi, it's so important that you are here with us today. What you are telling us will help us write up our report and recommendations. I'm extremely humbled by what you have told us today.
I would like to hear from all three of you on what I am about to say.
IRCC tells us that there is unconscious bias within the department. Do you agree that if we want to get to the root of the problem, we need to be able to properly identify it? I see a difference between saying that unconscious bias exists and saying that there is outright racism and, as you have told us, sexism within IRCC. Do you believe, as I do, that these things need to be called out?
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Thank you so much for speaking to that, because I think that is one of the problems. Often in polite society we will talk about unconscious bias. We will talk about cultural competency. We will say all of these kinds of words that we make sound very nice and very flowery but really what we are experiencing and what we have seen and what the Polaris report has stated and what we have heard in incidental conversations with IRCC staff and other colleagues is that there is real racism. There is real discrimination, and if we don't name it and we don't utilize the appropriate measures..., just as for any other type of action, if we want to change it, we absolutely need to be able to have those people in the room.
When we look at things through an equity lens, we're not asking for proportional representation. We're asking for equitable representation, which means in all levels of IRCC there needs to be much more proportional and equitable representation of the BIPOC community. There also needs to be, in my humble opinion, a lot more anti-racism training and discussion of something that everybody is scared to name. It's really interesting—back in the 1990s nobody was scared to say this, but now nobody wants to talk about white privilege anymore. Back in the 1990s it was something we could talk about and we could see as something real that we needed to address, but these days it's very difficult to talk about that.
I'm really grateful for the question that you asked, because I agree with you 100%.
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I will jump in and add very quickly that unconscious bias is a phenomenon about which we all need to have knowledge. It comes from a lack of education and understanding of the issue. Some of us are more educated in one area and more experienced in one area and some of us are not as well informed in some areas.
The problem is that the last entity of the federal government that should ever claim the benefit of or the right to exhibit unconscious bias is IRCC. IRCC exists to work with us, the settlement sector and all the other partners, to provide equitable services for newcomers. I would say they do a very good job of talking to us and of asking about our experiences. I would like to believe that they appreciate our feedback. However, they have to take responsibility for their own lack of knowledge and the message they are sending through this report. The core of Canadian philosophy about newcomers—equity and acceptance—lies in their ability and proficiency to understand the issue, and they are making decisions about millions of people who have come to Canada over the years. I don't think anybody can be excused for not being well aware of the issues of racism, discrimination and sexism, gender issues as they relate to immigration, and the benefits this country receives from immigration in terms of both nation building and labour market needs.
Immigration is essential to this country. In the third quarter of 2020 there was zero population growth in Canada, so those who make tough decisions about immigration cannot allow biases.
:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses for their presentations and for the work they do in our communities.
In terms of the differential treatment, embedded racism and explicit racism that exist within IRCC, and therefore in the policies that are associated with it, do you feel that there are any concerns with racism and differential treatment within IRCC policies?
For example, a lot of people get their rejections from IRCC on the basis that it is not believed that they will return to their home country, and when you look at those home countries, you see displayed certain countries that are particularly heightened in terms of that kind of refusal—the African countries, the global south countries.
Do you think embedded racism, as well as implicit and explicit racism, exist in those policies that result in those kinds of outcomes? I'd like to ask all the witnesses that question, please.
Yes, that is a concern for us. We know it exists. We've seen it repeatedly. We have studies that have shown it. We have reports that have shown this. Their own IRCC staff has stated that this is a problem, yet we haven't been able to begin to address it. How do we start to address that?
We've seen it. We've had people denied their visas to visit dying family members because IRCC was afraid that they were not going to return to the country or were going file an inland claim for refugee status or somehow disappear into the system.
I think those are grave concerns when you have families who are dependent, who need that support to care for someone who is here in Canada, for example, someone who is very ill, and who are being denied that visa or being denied that entry into the country. We are concerned. Also, this grows when you're having denials and having to provide more data. We've talked about the DNA testing, the security clearances and sometimes, where an office doesn't exist, having to travel to where that office exists to make sure that we can get the application process.
There are all those things, as well as not having access to Internet in certain countries where it's unaffordable, so yes, disproportionately, communities that are racialized and that tend to be low-income are being greatly impacted by this. It is concerning for us. As women, we know that our reliance on being able to support our families is really important. Not having those support systems creates additional family problems and additional societal issues here in Canada as well as in other places back home.
Go ahead, Beba.
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I can add a little bit to that.
The notion of policies is very important, because they guide all of us, right? They guide the funding decisions, and they guide the funding implementation for all of us.
However, the world is not black and white, and this might be an unfortunate.... Weddings and funerals are not happening every day in our lives. The grey, complicated circumstances that affect those days are the reality of our lives, so policies in relation to vulnerable populations should always be accommodated and evaluated based on the number of—for lack of a better word—intelligent exceptions that have to exist when working with humans.
Whenever I see the notion of IT and processing and everything in relation to vulnerable populations.... Some women who come to us have never held a pen in their lives, and then we are responsible, as the agencies, to transition them to [Technical difficulty—Editor] life in Canada, so sometimes the number of exceptions to the policies when you're working with humans should be the measure of our ability to understand the life around us and should be the measure for the politicians in high positions to actually position their policies towards acceptance.
We exist, the settlement sector, and the government purchases our services because they cannot serve all the newcomers they bring to Canada. Our services are equitable, culturally sensitive, immigrant based and understanding, so that people receive customized supports if they need customized supports.
Policies have to be based on the knowledge and understanding of the subject matter. It's a huge context, and the government, to a high level, appreciates that they should depend on our advice, all of us—
Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today and for all the great work that you do.
We've had an interesting conversation here today. I'm interested in the balance between the human resources and technology. We're talking about immigration, and we know that we don't have enough human resources. In some cases, those human resources are biased. So we bring in technology to help us out and speed up the files, thinking that it won't be biased. We have online applications. We have artificial intelligence. But we've heard today that the artificial intelligence is somewhat tainted also. So it's not perfect. It's somewhat biased.
How do we get the right balance between human resources and technology to eliminate any bias at all in our immigration? If all three of you could give me your perspectives on that, I'd really appreciate it.
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I'm sorry for interrupting, Ms. Filippi. The time is up.
Thanks a lot for appearing before the committee and for your important recommendations and testimonies. On behalf of all members of the committee, I really want to thank you for all the work that you are doing for the new immigrants, especially for marginalized women.
Before we finish, if any of the witnesses have some recommendations or something they would like to bring to the committee's attention as we continue our study, you can always send it in writing to the clerk of the committee. It will be circulated to all members of the committee.
With this, today's meeting comes to an end. Is it the pleasure of the committee to adjourn the meeting?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: The meeting is adjourned.