A Risky Move to Securitize Immigration

With Bill C-4, the government unfairly targets refugees and further concentrates power in the hands of the Minister of Immigration.

OTTAWA – The Peace Tower looms over Parliament Hill, chiming the hour and reminding me irresistibly of the opening bars of ACDC’s “Hell’s Bells.” I run into an affable Thomas Mulcair standing in front of Centre Block checking his Blackberry, and we talk politics for a few minutes, but he must be used to the sepulchral gongs emanating above our heads – sadly, he refrains from breaking into song: “If you’re into evil you’re a friend of mine!”

Yes, it’s September, and Canada’s 41st Parliament is back in session. Security on the Hill is tight, and my press credentials do not spare me from frequent sessions with metal detectors and vaguely embarrassed security personnel. I get the distinct impression most of the uniformed security guards here feel it’s all a bit much, but there are also plain-clothes security people who walk around the beautifully sculpted halls of Parliament looking serious as cancer, and they betray no embarrassment or awkwardness whatsoever. Maintaining a constant high level of professional paranoia must be no fun at all.

It says a lot about the new Conservative majority government that the first government bill up in this session is Bill C-4, the “Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act” – a law that poisonously conflates immigration and security issues. Written in the aftermath of the arrival, in August 2010, of the MV Sun Sea with nearly 500 Tamil refugees on board, Bill C-4 mandates, among other measures, that all groups of refugees who arrive on Canada’s shores through irregular means must spend a year in detention before a judge even hears their case. This, of course, includes children. Exceptions to this process, or lack thereof, are solely at the discretion of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, currently Jason Kenney.

Immigration: The case for open borders. Read it here.

Kenney says that the point of Bill C-4 is to act as a deterrent to refugees who may be considering coming to Canada as contraband aboard smugglers’ boats. What is remarkable is that Kenney, who has recently travelled to South East Asia and elsewhere on fact-finding missions about human smuggling, seems to have no idea that the many millions of refugees around the world probably aren’t paying close attention to the passage of this particular bill. Their problems – violence, homelessness, starvation, rape, exploitation, misery, etc. – tend to preclude the opportunity to make detailed examinations of immigration laws in the countries they’d like to escape to. Indeed, they may be in such desperate straits that the prospect of a year in jail seems like an acceptable price to pay for the potential safety that they and their families could obtain.

So claiming that this bill is a deterrent is simply nonsensical – especially when you consider that Canada already has laws against human smuggling. In 2005, Paul Martin’s government passed Bill C-49, “An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Trafficking in Persons),” which made several amendments to existing legislation and provides extremely tough punishments (including life in prison) for people convicted of human trafficking.

Note the distinction: Bill C-49 punishes human traffickers, but Bill C-4 seeks to punish the refugees themselves.

So this really isn’t a bill against human smugglers at all. It is simply a means of demonstrating to Canadian xenophobes, who are easily riled by images of the MV Sun Sea drifting off the coast of Vancouver Island (egged on by Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews’ unsupported claims that “terrorists” were on board), that the government is being tough on crime, foreigners, terrorists, etc.

Immigration: The case for tightening borders. Read it here.

It also provides an excuse to accomplish what this government apparently can’t do enough of – concentrate power into the hands of just one minister. When refugees in detention can’t appeal their situation, and when Immigration and Refugee boards can’t even see the victims of this legislation, one wonders what the point is of having government departments. Surely placing the physical and mental well-being of men, women, and children in the hands of one very comfortable minister seems a tad arbitrary, if not downright cruel.

In fact, it is also unconstitutional. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms doesn’t merely apply to Canadian citizens – it applies to every human being in the country, including newly arrived refugees. Charter-guaranteed rights of habeas corpus confirm that anyone who is detained has the right to promptly appear before a judge, who can determine the merits of the case against the detainee. Bill C-4 also flies in the face of several United Nations conventions, including the International Convention on the Status of Refugees, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, both of which Canada is a signatory.

But this is to be expected. One of the key characteristics of this government has been its continual flouting of the Charter. Now, with a majority in Parliament, the Harper GovernmentTM, will almost certainly pass plenty of unconstitutional laws over the next four years, all of which will require plenty of time and cash to fight in the courts. That means that we lose twice over: Both our rights and our money will be going down the toilet.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.