Tory ‘reforms’ target refugees
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The bill resurrects a previous immigra ficial Opposition New Democratic Party.
Refugees will increasingly be victim ized by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s majority federal government, thanks to Bill C-4, the Conservatives’ new immi gration reform bill. The bill empowers the government to label certain refugees “designated foreign nationals” whenever it believes that it will be difficult to estab lish their identity, or that their arrival in Canada might be connected in some way to a criminal or terrorist enterprise.
This label carries a heavy burden: “Des ignated foreign nationals” must be im prisoned for at least one year upon arriv al in Canada and, even if they succeed in obtaining refugee protection, they must wait at least five more years before ap plying for permanent residency. tion bill that the Conservatives drafted in 2010, as a panicky response to the ar rival of two boatloads of Tamil civil war refugees from Sri Lanka. That bill, which was introduced when Harper still led a minority government, was never passed due to the opposition of all other parties.
Bill C-4 is condemned by leading hu man rights and immigration advocacy groups, including Amnesty International and the Canadian Council for Refugees. The Canadian Bar Association has called the reforms “a harsh and dramatic shift in policy” that violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and conflict with Canada’s obligations under international refugee and human rights conventions.
Inside Parliament, the bill has been vig orously opposed by the labour-based Of Toronto MP Olivia Chow highlighted the true human cost of the bill with the example of a Haitian mother and child fleeing poverty and devastation in their homeland without identification: they would both face a year of incarceration, followed by five years during which they could not bring other relatives to join them. Ms. Chow’s inclusion of a child in her example was deliberate, since, as she explained, imprisonment has been shown to have particularly harsh psycho logical and emotional effects on children.
Another NDP MP, 22-year-old Mylène Freeman, summarized the basic unfair ness of Canada’s refugee system, which will only worsen with Harper’s proposed reforms: “Canada does not jail children unless they are seeking asylum. We do