By Allan Thompson Special to the Star
It was wrong then and it’s wrong now.
The Conservative government’s decision to reintroduce legislation that would crack down on refugee claimants who arrive on Canada’s shores by boat is a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and will almost certainly be struck down by the courts.
In a nutshell, you just can’t treat one group of refugee claimants differently than another. Yet that is precisely what the government proposes.
And the penalties for refugee claimants deemed to have arrived in Canada through a “designated human smuggling event” are quite simply draconian.
These refugee claimants would be subject to lengthy detention without review. Even if they can prove they are legitimate refugees who fled persecution, they would still be heavily penalized because of the mode of transport they used. They would be barred from applying for permanent resident status for five years and prevented from seeking reunion with their families during the same period.
Because they were deemed to be “irregular arrivals,” they would have fewer legal rights within the refugee determination system, and would also get second-rate protection because the minister could decide down the road to strip them of their status and deport them.
The measures are simply astounding. And so are the inherent contradictions in the plan.
How can we punish someone who is deemed by Canada’s refugee system to have been in legitimate need of protection?
We have a refugee determination system in Canada precisely because in our world, there will be people who show up at our border uninvited, seeking our protection. That’s what refugees do. This government deems those people to be queue-jumpers who are taking advantage.
What was their alternative route to seeking Canada’s protection? How many Tamil refugee claimants were sponsored by the Conservative government to come to Canada last year?
There is another contradiction embedded in the legislation. It is fuzzy on the question of how the government would decide which refugee claimants should be punished for using a human smuggler. The implication is that those who arrive in large numbers by boat — like the celebrated 490 asylum seekers who arrived in B.C. last summer on the Sun Sea — would be deemed to have been part of an “irregular arrival,” and hence subject to harsh punishment without any recourse.
The contradiction the ministers don’t tackle is the fact that scores of refugee claimants who may well have used the services of human smugglers arrive in Canada each day by other means, individually or in small groups.
While a few hundred Tamil refugee claimants arrived on Canada’s shores on a rusty boat met by a media frenzy, thousands of other claimants from around the world arrived unnoticed, many forced to use false documents in order to escape their countries of persecution and make the journey.
So which refugee claimants do we punish?
Would people who arrive in minivans be Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s next target? Or perhaps those wearing plaid jackets, or those carrying more than two pieces of luggage?
By the government’s logic, young women who are lured into the sex trade by human smugglers should also be punished for their conduct, detained when detected and then prevented from integrating into Canadian society.
And what about the dozens of Polish and Ukrainian welders allegedly spirited into Canada by the Alberta priest recently accused of running an immigration scam? If those charges are proven in court, by Kenney’s logic, the welders should be detained and punished as part of a human smuggling scheme.
Where does it stop? In my view, it should stop right now, before it starts.
Instead of striking a tough public posture for political consumption, the minister and his officials should try harder to come up with a strategy that would truly punish the human smugglers who prey upon vulnerable asylum seekers. And our government should pay more attention to the human rights abuses or political tensions that give rise to the migration of asylum seekers in the first place.
Instead, the government proposes to punish those who would do almost anything to escape the situation they are in and get a chance to start a new life in Canada.
International law is clear: it is not a crime to seek asylum.
And yet, our government proposes to treat asylum seekers like criminals.
World Citizen appears every second Saturday. immigration@thestar.ca
