NEWS
Monday, October 13, 2015 7
Canada and Refugee Rights
Where do we actually stand on the issue?
imelda lo › contributor
C
anada likes to pride itself for being progressive on refugee issues, but is it really as
kind and open to refugees as we would like
to believe?
The saddening story of Alan Kurdi has raised some
doubts about Canada’s self-image. Tima Kurdi had
attempted to sponsor her brother Mohammed and his
family to come to Canada, but did not have enough
money to bring Abdullah, her other brother. As a
result, they had to wait, despite the dangers of their
current situation. However, due to changing circumstances, Abdullah and his family could no longer
afford to wait and joined thousands of other refugees
by boarding a boat to Europe. In a cruel twist of fate,
Abdullah was the only survivor—his wife and children drowned. His son Alan’s corpse was later photographed at a popular tourist beach in Bodrum,
Turkey. His small body lifeless and limp, Alan
could have easily been asleep. But like his mother
and brother—and thousands of other migrants—
he is dead, one of the many victims of First World
indifference.
In Europe and in Canada, refugees have mostly
been seen as someone else’s problem. Under Stephen
Harper’s Conservative government, the media has
continued to parrot that Canada “remains a model of
humanitarian action” and that we are “the most generous country to refugees in the world.”
In reality, however, Canada’s refugee policy is not
as generous as it may initially appear. Red tape and
the spectre of “incomplete applications” have made
it especially difficult for refugees to come to Canada,
leading to disastrous consequences, as in the case
of the Kurdis. Especially since the Conservative
government passed Bill C-31 in 2012, Canada has
become increasingly hostile to refugees. According to
Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney,
C-31 was designed to “combat human smuggling and
to ensure that the asylum system is ‘fast and fair’.”
Framed as a way of protecting Canada from “criminals” and “unfounded refugee claims,” the law
required mandatory detention for refugees deemed
“irregular arrivals,” including children, although
this was later struck down by the Federal Court.
Accordingly, costs from detaining migrants, immigrants and asylum seekers have exploded over the
last couple of years. Especially disturbing is the high
number of children in detention. Based on the statistics, between 196 and 287 people below the age of
seventeen have been detained with their parents or
family between 2010-11 and 2013-14 with an additional seventeen to thirty-one detained without adult
accompaniment during the same time intervals.
The way Canada has treated refugees has also
come under scrutiny, especially in the case of thirtynine-year-old Abdurahman Ibrahim Hassan, a diabetic, mentally ill Somali refugee who died in prison.
Hassan had severe schizophrenia and had been
accepted as a refugee in Canada in the mid 1990s.
In 2012, after an assault conviction, he was jailed
and because he was deemed a threat to the Canadian
public, he was incarcerated and subject to deportation to Somalia. He had little to no prospect for
release.
Hassan is only one example. According to the
University of Toronto Faculty of Law’s “We Have No
Rights” report, seven thousand migrants were incarcerated in Canada last year alone. Many of these
migrants are extremely vulnerable and are already
suffering from mental illness, as exemplified by
Hassan. Uday, for example, also has schizophrenia. In his case, he had no criminal record but was
detained for nearly three years in two maximumsecurity Ontario jails because the Canada Border
Services Agency (CBSA) was not able to confirm his
country of origin or his identity. As such, they determined that he was a risk to the public. After being
released, he has been recognized as de facto stateless.
To this day, he remembers how detention had negatively impacted his mental health. While incarcerated, he and the others “had no rights at all [and] they
treat[ed] us like garbage.”
As lawyers in training, we should be concerned
about this refugee crisis, especially as it relates to
access to justice for marginalized communities