Canon ViXIA's focuses on background, NOT subject, when BG has a pattern. You noticed?
 

Hi,

This has happened consistently enough for me that I know it must be happening for you. I have a Canon HF200. Great camera. I have it set to instant autofocus.

One thing I've noticed is whenever the person/subject is standing in front of a high contrast background, such as a dark picture on a white wall, or in front of a backdrop that has vertical lines, it will focus on the background, making it sharp and making the focus on the subject soft.

That is really annoying and bad for the footage.

Is there any solution to this, or are we cursed with poor focus on our subjects faces. There doesn't seem to be a menu item for manual focus. Would setting it to normal focus be any different or no difference?

I think that if you look through the menu (or even the instruction manual) you'll find manual focus. Canon say that is has auto/manual focus...
The camera doesn't really have a mind of its own - if it sees a nice sharp background, it's going to focus on it - depending on how much of the background is visible in relation to the foreground subject, and where the subject is in the frame.
Manual is the way to go: zoom right in to your subject in auto focus, then switch in the manual control and lock the focus there.

Facial recognition and tracking?
 

I remember that one of the new features on last year's model (including HF-200) was face tracking. The feature is used both for auto focus, as well as auto exposure features, supposedly making sure that, if there are human faces in the frame, they get properly exposed and in focus.

Apparently, to our OP, this feature isn't working as expected. Therefore, manual focus should be used, and it is fairly easy to engage. This is explained on Page 71 of your manual (get the joystick guide, navigate to the Focus Adjustment selection, SET to lock engage auto-focus and move joystick left-right to adjust focus).

With about 30 seconds of googling, I found this info in the manual right away.

yep to both responses. I looked in the manual and it was in a different part of the camera than I was looking.

thanks