Wanted: A contractor to help immigration officials use algorithms and data-mining to assess the personal risks of sending a failed refugee claimant home and to calculate if a migrant is well-established enough to stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds.This is not a fictional ad but a tender notice recently issued by Ottawa to explore the potential use of artificial intelligence and data analytics in Canada’s immigration and refugee system. According to a new University of Toronto study, the job ad is just the latest example of government replacing human decision-making with machines — a trend it says is creating “a laboratory for high-risk experiments” that threaten migrants’ human rights and should alarm all Canadians.“The nuanced and complex nature of many refugee and immigration claims may be lost on these technologies, leading to serious breaches of internationally and domestically protected human rights, in the form of bias, discrimination, privacy breaches, due process and procedural fairness issues,” warned the 88-page report being released Wednesday by U of T’s International Human Rights Program and Citizen Lab.“These systems will have life-and-death ramifications for ordinary people, many of whom are fleeing for their lives.”Concerned about the human impact of automated systems, researchers dug into public records such as public statements, policies and media reports of the federal government’s adoption of the technologies in the immigration system. More than 30 experts were consulted, including computer scientists, technologists, lawyers, advocates and academics from Canada, the U.S, Hong Kong, South Korea, Australia and Brazil.Researchers have also submitted 27 separate access to information requests to eight different government departments and agencies, but have yet to receive any data or response.Study co-author Petra Molnar said Canada has used automated decision-making tools since ...
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