Years after two ships brought 568 migrants to Canada, seven acquittals and one conviction

2017/07/29 Leave a comment

After all the public outcry – understandable given public concerns about queue jumping but pumped up by then CIC Minister Kenney – only one conviction, although the prosecuting the case may have acted as a deterrent for other ships:

The first vessel — undersized and not built for ocean voyages — laboured toward the B.C. coast in October 2009 with 76 Tamil asylum-seekers onboard.

Then in August 2010, a larger ship — but with the same questionable seaworthiness — was intercepted off the coast with 492 Tamil migrants.

The Ocean Lady and Sun Sea passengers all claimed they were fleeing the ravages of civil war in Sri Lanka. But the Conservative government at the time took an aggressive stance — detaining and building cases against many of the asylum-seekers — as part of a campaign to deter future “irregular arrivals.” A handful of passengers from each ship were also charged with being part of criminal human-smuggling operations.

However, on Thursday, four accused from the Ocean Lady were found not guilty, bringing to seven the total number of acquittals. There has been only one conviction.

“The government has spent years and huge amounts of money to fight the passengers of the Ocean Lady and the Sun Sea — in the courts, in the refugee hearing processes, detaining them as long as they could. All for what?” said Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees.

“The charges of criminality and security risks have been shown to be without foundation. … At least we can take pride in the fact that Canadian institutions and courts continue to treat people fairly.”

In the Ocean Lady case, the Crown had tried to argue that Francis Anthonimuthu Appulonappa, Hamalraj Handasamy, Jeyachandran Kanagarajah and Vignarajah Thevarajah played significant roles during the voyage — captain, engine room worker, chief engineer and transportation provider — and thus helped to organize, aid or abet a smuggling enterprise.

But in a decision released Thursday, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Arne Silverman said while there was evidence of organized criminal activity, the Crown had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the activities of the four men were connected to it or helped to further it.

“There is circumstantial evidence from which it can be argued that common sense dictates that this vessel and voyage could not have been mounted without the assistance of persons involved in organized crime,” Silverman said. “However, there is little evidence of a connection or a furthering ‘through acts’ of the four accused.”

The Supreme Court of Canada helped pave the way for Thursday’s outcome when it found in 2015 that Canada’s human-smuggling laws should not extend to people who are simply assisting family members or providing humanitarian or mutual aid to refugees.

In Thursday’s ruling, Silverman said: “I am satisfied that all of the conduct performed by the four accused was performed in pursuit of that mutual goal and amounts solely to mutual aid.”

All four men smiled, laughed and shook hands in court after the decision came down, The Canadian Press reported.

Mark Jette, a lawyer for one of the accused, said the courts have sent an important message.

“If you’re an internationally active people smuggler or trafficker who’s engaged in this for profit, you’re going to be prosecuted. If you get on a boat and assist yourself and others to get across safely, you’re not a criminal.”

While Thursday’s ruling does not mean the four accused’s refugee claims will automatically be accepted, it does give them a “fighting chance,” he added.

Speaking outside court, Kanagarajah described how he and the other migrants were convinced partway through the ocean journey that they would not survive.

“Most of the refugees believed that we were going to die, because there were so many storms, and the sea was very rough,” he said. “Fortunately we are here today.”

Kanagarajah said he still wants to become a Canadian citizen and plans to go to college to study business.

Earlier this year, three of four men accused of human smuggling in the Sun Sea case — Lesly Emmanuel, Nadarajah Mahendran and Thampeernayagam Rajaratnam — were similarly acquitted by a jury. The jury, however, could not reach a decision regarding a fourth man, Kunarobinson Christhurajah.

Following a retrial, Christhurajah was found guilty in May.

According to the most recent figures available from the Immigration and Refugee Board, eight men from the Ocean Lady were deemed inadmissible and received deportation orders, 36 refugees claims were accepted, and 21 claims were rejected.

In the Sun Sea cases, 22 were ordered deported after being found inadmissible, 230 refugee claims were accepted and 107 claims were rejected.

Source: Years after two ships brought 568 migrants to Canada, seven acquittals and one conviction | National Post

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Turkish asylum claims up 5-fold in Canada amid Erdogan’s ‘witch hunt’

2017/07/18 1 Comment

Expected:

One year after a dramatic military coup unfolded and ultimately failed live on Turkish state television — with defiant soldiers commandeering warplanes and facing off against government supporters on a bridge over the Bosphorous Sea — the government crackdowns that ensued continue to be felt as far away as Canada.

The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada says asylum claims from Turkey shot up to more than 1,300 during 2016 — close to five times as many as the year before — with about 398 claims accepted, about four times as many in 2015. This year, the agency says, there have already been 590 claims, 248 of which have been accepted so far.

Toronto-based lawyer Britt Gunn says many of those claims are from those afraid of being classified as terrorists under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdowns. So far, tens of thousands of people with real or perceived links to polarizing cleric Fethullah Gulen — once a close ally of Erdogan’s and now the leader of the Gulen movement living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999 — have been arrested, detained or expelled.

“People are afraid they’re going to go back, be arrested, languish in prison for who knows how long, not have access to a lawyer, not really know what the charges are against them and essentially become the victim of this witch hunt that’s being carried out,” said Gunn, who says she has about 25 clients from Turkey at the moment.

Source: Turkish asylum claims up 5-fold in Canada amid Erdogan’s ‘witch hunt’ – Toronto – CBC News

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Thousands of refugee cases suspended due to border agency delays

2017/07/18 Leave a comment

More on ongoing refugee determination delays, beyond IRB unfilled positions:

Despite law that requires all refugee hearings to be heard within 60 days once a claim is initially deemed eligible by an immigration officer, more and more asylum hearings like Ahmad’s have been suspended indefinitely because of delays at the Canada Border Services Agency in issuing clearances of what is known as front-end security screening.

According to the refugee board, only 46 per cent of asylum claims were heard within the statutory timeline in April, far below the 84 per cent mark two years ago.

Failures to observe the scheduling timelines are caused by delays in security clearances, operational limitations or unavailability of interpreters or counsel.

However, the proportion of hearing cancellations due to delays in obtaining a security clearance has ballooned from just 6 per cent two years ago to a peak of 55 per cent in December, meaning more than half of cancelled hearings were due to border officials’ inability to meet timelines for assessing if a claimant poses threats to Canada due to criminal or security concerns.

Although cancellations due to a pending security clearance were down to just 13 per cent in April, cases cancelled due to so-called operational limitations such as unavailability of refugee judges was up to 32 per cent from 8 per cent in 2015 and 13 per cent in 2016.

In the first four months of this year, 1,769 refugee hearings were cancelled because claimants’ security clearances were not ready. The border agency performed 12,997 security checks for refugees in 2015 and 19,449 last year.

“The (former) Conservative government has put in place a system with strict timelines without the resources to meet the timelines,” said Ahmad’s lawyer, Max Berger.

“Lots of claimants are devastated. They are psyched to tell their stories and have their date in (refugee) courts. The hidden cost is the delays in their family reunification.”

The refugee board said the border agency is responsible for informing it that security screening has been completed. The board doesn’t receive the actual security screening report but only a confirmation if a hearing can go ahead.

“Security screening is done to ensure that individuals who might pose a risk to Canada would not be granted protection and could not use the refugee determination process to gain admittance to Canada,” said Line-Alice Guibert-Wolff, a spokesperson for the board.

“In those cases where confirmation of security screening has not been received in time for the initially scheduled hearing, the (refugee board) will remove the hearing from the schedule and set a new date and time for the hearing as soon as feasible upon confirmation of the security screening.”

It is not known how long it takes to schedule a new hearing but claimants often are given a “target” date six months later.

“Front-end securing screening for an individual refugee claimant may take time depending on complexity or requirements for additional research,” said border agency spokesperson Patrizia Giolti.

“While there is no one specific factor that may impact the (security clearance) processing workload and timelines, 2016 has seen a significant increase over the previous year, in the number of asylum claims.”

The agency has started to give the refugee board two weeks’ notice if a screening is expected to be completed in time for a hearing and has brought in additional staff to work over the summer to perform security screening to address the backlog, said Giolti.

Calling the situation a “nightmare,” lawyer Raoul Boulakia said he has had a case where a refugee judge felt there was compelling reasons to grant asylum to a persecuted Afghan journalist and was ready to proceed with a hearing. However, the case was held up without a completed security clearance.

Recently, the refugee board has introduced a “50/50” policy by postponing 50 per cent of all new asylum cases to deal what’s known as legacy cases, which were put on the back-burner after December 2012, when the then Tory government overhauled the system to impose the statutory timeline to expedite the processing of refugee claims.

By delaying the hearings without injecting more resources, Boulakia said the problem is simply snowballing and gets worse down the road.

Source: Thousands of refugee cases suspended due to border agency delays | Toronto Star

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U.S. Refugee Admissions Pass Trump Administration Cap Of 50,000 : The Two-Way : NPR

2017/07/14 Leave a comment

By way of comparison, the Canadian 2017 levels plans has a target of 40,000 (about 0.1 percent of the population), the US cap of 50,000 is about 0.02 percent of their population). However, the US has a much higher number of undocumented immigrants/refugees, estimated at 11 million or  about three percent of the population:

The U.S. refugee program surpassed the Trump Administration’s 50,000-person cap on Wednesday, meaning that many refugees will now be denied entry into the country.

The cap is expected to affect thousands of refugees. Last fiscal year, the U.S. admitted just under 85,000 refugees, and former President Barack Obama had aimed to resettle 110,000 refugees this fiscal year. But President Trump lowered the cap dramatically in his “travel ban” executive orders, and the cap went into effect on June 29.

“The State Department initially told resettlement agencies it expected to hit that threshold by July 6,” NPR’s Jackie Northam reports. “But that date came and went and the number of refugees entering the country wasn’t reached. So the date was extended to July 12.”

Close Family Ties, Job Offers Considered 'Bona Fide' As Trump Travel Ban Takes Effect

The total number of admitted refugees reached 50,086 by Wednesday afternoon. A State Department official tells NPR that the department decided to set the cutoff at the end of the day, instead of at the exact number 50,000, to keep the process “orderly.”

That number of admitted refugees could still rise by several thousand, as refugees with close family members already in the U.S. will continue to be allowed to enter the country, under the terms of a recent Supreme Court order.

You may recall that Trump established the 50,000-person cap in his initial and revised “travel ban” executive orders. For months, those orders were blocked from implementation. But in June, the Supreme Court announced it would consider the merits of the ban and that in the meantime, portions of the second executive order could go forward — as long as they didn’t block people who had a “bona fide relationship” with the U.S.

The administration later defined “bona fide” ties as including parents, children and siblings in the U.S., but not grandparents or more extended family members. Bona fide ties also include job offers in the U.S.

Refugees who do not have such ties will no longer be admitted this fiscal year, even if they have completed the two-year vetting process to enter the refugee program. The next fiscal year begins in October.

Last month, NPR’s Michele Kelemen explained what’s at stake:

“[R]efugees have arrived in the U.S. this fiscal year from all over the world — from Syria, of course, but also Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan. It’s really a global humanitarian program. …

“I’m told thousands could be affected by [the cap]. One refugee resettlement agency told me today that they usually book people about three weeks ahead of time. … It’s not just airline tickets. Refugees have to go through medical screenings. And those clearances don’t last forever. If they rebook for later, they might have to redo all of that medical screening and security checks.”

The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which resettles refugees in the U.s., said in a statement that the cap “will mean that vulnerable refugees, including those with severe medical needs, torture survivors, unaccompanied refugee children, and persecuted religious minorities will continue to be in harm’s way.”

The pause on refugee admissions “will have an immediate effect on our ability to conduct the lifesaving work of providing safety and protection,” Kay Bellor, a vice president at LIRS, said in the statement.

Trump’s executive order proclaims that admitting more than 50,000 refugees “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” It allows for individual refugees to be admitted on a “case-by-case basis,” based on the joint judgment of the secretary of state and secretary of Homeland Security.

Source: U.S. Refugee Admissions Pass Trump Administration Cap Of 50,000 : The Two-Way : NPR

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El Salvador woman at the heart of legal challenge to Safe Third Country Agreement

2017/07/10 Leave a comment

Interesting case to watch given that it centres around a person rather than the previous more general one:

When an El Salvador woman and her two children arrived from a Buffalo, N.Y., shelter to the Fort Erie border crossing Wednesday, seeking to make a refugee claim in Canada, a team of lawyers from Toronto’s Downtown Legal Services was on high alert. They had U of T law students waiting and watching to report back from the border.

As soon as the woman — identified only as “ABC” in court documents — was denied entry under the Safe Third Country Agreement, the legal team filed a Federal Court challenge to the agreement, which they had been working on for months.

The agreement requires refugees to request protection in the first safe country they arrive in. Refugees crossing from the U.S. at official border crossings are usually denied entry into Canada. That’s part of the reason why so many risk sometimes dangerous illegal border crossings to make a refugee claim once already in the country — a legal loophole that’s permitted.

This is the second legal challenge to the agreement but the first with a person at its core.

“I feel happy and nervous and I am very thankful the lawyers are helping,” said ABC through a translator, when CBC News met her in a Toronto home on Thursday. “Canada is more humane than the U.S. In the U.S. it’s not safe, and I was worried about being sent back to El Salvador.”

Fear of gangs in El Salvador

Justice Ann Marie McDonald granted the woman a stay to live in Canada while her case is being considered. McDonald said there was clear and non-speculative evidence that she would suffer irreparable harm if she were to return to the U.S. and could even be sent back to El Salvador.

ABC’s lawyer, Prasanna Balasundaram, said that some of the strongest legal arguments in this case are based on charter rights. She is facing removal procedures in the U.S., and gender-based asylum claims in the U.S. have inconsistent results. He said that ABC has lasting psychological effects from persecution in El Salvador.

“Her family is the subject of gang violence in El Salvador,” said Balasundaram.

“I dream that all my family is together after all these years and that we don’t have to go home because of the gangs,” said ABC.

….Ottawa says U.S. safe for refugees

A spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said in an email to CBC News this week that “Canada has carefully analyzed recent developments in the United States, including the executive orders related to immigration and refugee matters, and determined that the U.S. remains a safe country for asylum claimants to seek protection there.”

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen has said there is no need to “tinker with” the Safe Third Country Agreement. This pending Federal Court challenge was brought to his attention before ABC even attempted to cross the border.

There may not be political will to challenge the U.S. over this right now, but the courts will have a say.

“I believe now it will be determined on a legal basis and not on the political climate,” said Balasundaram, who calls this a crucial first step — and only a first step — in what could take many months to a year to see through.

Toronto immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman represented Amnesty International in a 2005 court challenge to the Safe Third Country Agreement, which won in Federal Court but lost on appeal.

“It is not going to be easy to challenge,” said Waldman. “I would bet the government would not want this case to go ahead.”

In the previous case the court did not consider it a charter challenge, and there was not an individual such as ABC with a strong argument to make.

“I think the case will be heard,” said Waldman. “Its likelihood of success will depend on the evidence.”

Source: El Salvador woman at the heart of legal challenge to Safe Third Country Agreement – Canada – CBC News

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‘Impossible to close the gap’: Immigration board boss says more resources needed to process legacy refugees – Canada – CBC News

2017/07/08 Leave a comment

More on IRB problems – Dion is polite in not flagging the number of adjudicator issue (see Globe editorial: The Trudeau government is failing refugee claimants, and Canadians):

Faced with a swelling backlog and a promise to resolve five-year-old asylum claims, the chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada admits he needs more funding and more people.

Mario Dion insists the IRB has become more efficient in dealing with cases, but it’s not enough.

“I am afraid the way things are at this point we will need additional resources … because there is a limit to how much you can stretch one person’s time,” Dion said in an interview with CBC News.

He said it’s “essentially impossible to close the gap using existing resources.”

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen recently announced a review of the asylum system, but he’s offered no guarantee of additional funding.

The bulk of the backlog is made up of Canada’s so-called legacy refugees.

They are a group of about 5,500 people who have yet to have their asylum claims heard. That’s because they arrived in Canada in 2012, just before the federal government passed a law that requires new refugee clams to be heard within 60 days. Since the IRB had to comply with the law, it put thousands of existing files to the side — where they’ve stayed ever since.

Source: ‘Impossible to close the gap’: Immigration board boss says more resources needed to process legacy refugees – Canada – CBC News

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Groups ask Federal Court to strike down Safe Third Country deal with the U.S. – Politics – CBC News

2017/07/07 Leave a comment

Not entirely unexpected. Court case may as much to raise the political profile as expected a ruling in their favour:

A legal challenge is being launched against the Canada-U.S. agreement that governs where people can make asylum claims on either side of the border.

Three advocacy groups are throwing their support behind a woman being named only as “E” in asking the Federal Court to strike down the so-called Safe Third Country Agreement.

Under the deal, most people who make an asylum claim at the land border are denied entry; as a result, there’s been an influx of people crossing illegally into Canada in recent months to file asylum claims.

The Canadian Council for Refugees, Amnesty International and the Canadian Council of Churches are among the many groups urging Canada to suspend the arrangement following major changes to U.S. immigration and refugee policy since the election of President Donald Trump.

But now they’re asking the Federal Court to step in, arguing that sending claimants back to the U.S. is morally and legally wrong because it risks violating their basic rights.

The litigant in the case is described as a Salvadoran woman who fled after being targeted by a gang and who believes she won’t be protected in the U.S.

It’s not the first time the deal has been tested in court.

A legal challenge was mounted after it came into force in 2004, and while the Federal Court at the time agreed the U.S. may not be safe for all refugees, the decision was overturned on appeal.

Ensuring ‘human dignity’

“Our organizations have pressed repeatedly, expecting that Canada would move to suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement as regard for the rights of refugees has rapidly plummeted under the Trump administration,” said Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada in a statement.

“To our astonishment and disappointment, however, the Canadian government continues to maintain that the U.S. asylum system qualifies as safe. We are left with no choice but to turn to the courts to protect refugee rights.”

Despite the deal, there are people showing up at the land border and getting through based on the exemptions that exist, including having family already in Canada.

Data obtained under the Access to Information Act showed that over a six-day period in March, 123 people showed up at legal entry points along the border and requested asylum; 66 were judged eligible and 57 turned away.

But Canada needs to go further, Rev. Karen Hamilton, general secretary of The Canadian Council of Churches, said in a statement.

“The government of Canada has a responsibility to ensure that the human dignity of all persons is respected. So it is imperative that all who seek refuge in Canada are afforded the protections guaranteed to them under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international human rights treaties.”

A spokesperson for Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen said the government’s position on the agreement has not changed, and the deal remains in force

The federal Liberals have said they believe the deal does not need to be suspended or altered, as the asylum system in the United States is still functioning.

Source: Groups ask Federal Court to strike down Safe Third Country deal with the U.S. – Politics – CBC News

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Globe editorial: The Trudeau government is failing refugee claimants, and Canadians

2017/07/06 1 Comment

Valid points – backlogs will only increase, requiring more funding and personnel to handle.

Hard to understand why IRB appointments are taking so long – after all, the government has been able to appoint almost 100 judges over the past year and a half (after a slow start):

Our neighbour to the south has taken a pronounced nativist turn in recent months, and the government of Canada’s response has been to throw the doors open – rhetorically, at least.

Last January, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to social media and proclaimed, “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.”

As political marketing goes, it was nicely timed. But to be completely insulated from truth-in-advertising complaints, it should have included a disclaimer – “Offer available only to genuine refugees, as defined by law. As we are experiencing an unusually high number of claimants at this time, it could take many years for our government to decide whether you are legally entitled to welcome, or removal.”

According to the latest federal statistics, more than 14,000 people have registered their intention to seek asylum in Canada through the first five months of 2017.

That number doesn’t include refugees from Syria, who are being fast-tracked, and it adds upon the 23,900 who arrived in 2016 – itself a sharp increase from the 16,000 who came in 2015.

Last month, the federal government offered a modicum of good news to 5,500 people whose claims had been shunted to the back burner by the former Conservative government. Most have been waiting in limbo since at least 2012; their cases are expected to proceed in the fall.

Unfortunately, this will barely dent the application backlog, which is estimated at close to 40,000 cases.

The wait faced by refugee claimants – legitimate or otherwise – is too lengthy, and also unfair. It is well known that the longer an application is delayed, the lower the chance of it being accepted.

Meanwhile, the influx of asylum-seekers is unlikely to abate. There’s been a surge in the number of claimants showing up at Canada-U.S. border crossings since President Donald Trump took office in January, but even that is not the whole story.

The United Nations’ Refugee Agency calculates there are more displaced people on the planet right now – 65 million – than at any point since the Second World War.

A government analysis obtained by the Canadian Press forecasts the number of refugee claimants in Canada will hit 36,000 this year, and rise by as much as 20 per cent a year after that.

If the current trends hold, the time required to process an application will reach 11 years in 2021, and could cost $3-billion in social support payments. This must not be allowed to happen.

Hiring more staff and expanding budgets are an unavoidable aspect of correcting the situation, but it isn’t a matter of applying a simple fix.

The new federal appointments process announced earlier this year, billed as independent and competence-based, has been a disaster for the Immigration and Refugee Board. Dozens of key jobs remain vacant, while the number of claims is rising rapidly.

On June 21, the IRB announced its Western Canada immigration appeal division – which deals primarily with applications involving family members and dependents abroad – would be working at reduced capacity “for at least the next six months” because of staffing shortages.

The re-appointment of two outgoing members to one-year terms, announced that same day, won’t do much to ease the bottleneck. There should be 11 on the job, but there are currently only four.

Across all regions, the IRB’s refugee and immigration appeals divisions have a shortage of at least 29 members, and the terms of another 29 are set to expire at the end of this year, according to one news report.

The vacancies, and the slowness with which the Trudeau government is filling them, have led to accusations that Ottawa is culling IRB members who were appointed by the Conservatives in order to replace them with Liberal supporters.

Whatever the reasons, the IRB is unable to handle the load because Ottawa is allowing members’ terms to end while failing to appoint new people in a timely fashion.

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen recently announced a third-party review to examine resource levels and the various bureaucratic mechanisms involved. However, it won’t be concluded until next year, and that’s not good enough.

The IRB has raised the alert about under-staffing for years. An overwhelmed immigration and refugee process, already buffeted by an ill-advised overhaul under the Harper government, has real-world impacts. It’s bad for asylum seekers, and undermines public confidence.

Ottawa must move quickly to show Canadians that their government is doing more than drifting in its response. Tweeting “#WelcomeToCanada” is an empty gesture by the Prime Minister, if it’s not accompanied by action.

Source: Globe editorial: The Trudeau government is failing refugee claimants, and Canadians – The Globe and Mail

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A [Kellie Leitch] Tweet Stirs Up Canada’s Immigration Debate – The New York Times

2017/06/22 Leave a comment

Why does it take the NYT to report this? How did the Canadian media (to my knowledge) miss this important background:

Mr. Rafia and his wife, Raghda Aldndal, were the subject of a sensitive and probing documentary about Canada’s Syrian refugees, produced by two Australian filmmakers last year. The film, “Canada’s Open House,” gives an unusual opportunity to look more deeply into the case.

Canada’s Open House Video by SBS Dateline

Dawn Burke, chairwoman of the group that sponsored the Rafia family in the small town of Chipman, New Brunswick, said she used interpreters multiple times to explain Canadian laws, including those against domestic violence, to Mr. Rafia.

The larger issue that the case illustrates, said one of the filmmakers, Amos Roberts, is the difficulty that many older refugees, particularly men, face in adapting to new lives in a foreign culture. More than 40,000 Syrian refugees have settled in Canada, almost half of them sponsored privately by ordinary citizens like Ms. Burke.

“To expect new immigrants, especially refugees, to adapt within a year or two is mind-boggling,” said Professor Hamza, the interpreter.

“You feel like a stranger,” Mr. Rafia said in the documentary, which was made shortly after the family’s arrival. “Guantánamo Bay is a prison on an island. It’s the same here.”

The couple’s arranged marriage was already troubled in Syria, and Mr. Rafia admitted early on that he had beaten his wife in the past, Ms. Burke said.

“We made it very clear that he was not allowed to hit his wife,” she added.

The family eventually moved to Fredericton, a city where they would be closer to a Syrian community and jobs were more plentiful. But the marriage did not improve and on May 18, Ms. Aldndal showed up at a Fredericton hospital with injuries from a beating. Mr. Rafia was arrested and pleaded guilty on May 26.

Right-leaning media picked up the story, accusing Canadian liberals of welcoming wolves in sheep’s clothing.

But few who understand the case see it as an indictment of Canada’s multicultural immigration policies or its progressive refugee outreach. “It’s not a legacy. It’s an exception,” Ms. Burke said, referring to the line that Ms. Leitch posted.

Mr. Roberts, the filmmaker, said it was “horrifying to see this one incident become a useful bit of propaganda” for anti-immigration forces.

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Kellie Leitch criticized over tweet attacking Syrian refugee program

2017/06/21 Leave a comment

Deservedly so. Sun columnist and former Conservative ministerial staffer Candice Malcolm, the originator of the line (The real legacy of Trudeau’s Syrian refugee program), merits the same:

Conservative MP Kellie Leitch is facing new criticism after she issued a tweet portraying the legacy of the Liberals’ Syrian refugee program as a lone domestic violence case involving a Syrian refugee in Fredericton.

Social media erupted after Ms. Leitch tweeted Sunday: “A battered wife and a bloodied hockey stick. That’s the legacy of Trudeau’s Syrian refugee program,” quoting and including a link to a Toronto Sun column about a Syrian refugee in Fredericton who beat his wife with a hockey stick. Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen said Ms. Leitch’s tweet is as disgraceful as domestic violence itself.

“It’s [domestic violence] clearly something that we abhor and we condemn. What Ms. Leitch is doing is equally reprehensible because she’s tying in a problem that exists everywhere – both in refugee communities and in … our society. This is a problem that many societies grapple with. She’s tying that in with our refugee policy,” Ms. Hussen said in an interview with The Globe and Mail on Monday.

The column, written by Candice Malcolm last Friday, attempts to make the case for Ms. Leitch’s Canadian values test, saying it would have “gone a long way” in the case of Mohamad Rafia, who told the court he didn’t know it was against Canadian law to beat his wife. The Syrian refugee, who arrived in Canada 14 months ago, was sentenced to one year probation, according to a report by The Daily Gleaner on June 8.

Ms. Leitch’s proposed “Canadian values test” was a key part of her recent Conservative leadership campaign. The test would make newcomers go through face-to-face interviews with trained immigration officers to screen for Canadian values such as freedom, tolerance and generosity.

Ms. Leitch lost last month’s Conservative leadership vote, dropping off the ballot at the ninth of thirteen rounds with 7.95 per cent of the vote. Andrew Scheer won the race and now leads the Conservative Party in the House of Commons, where Ms. Leitch sits on his front bench.

When contacted by The Globe Monday, Ms. Leitch’s phone line went dead. Follow-up calls were not answered.

Asked about Ms. Leitch’s tweet, Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel said she would not speak on behalf of her colleague.

“I’m not going to speak on behalf of one member of our party. I’m going to speak on behalf of the record of our former government and the very positive and assertive position that we’ve taken as a party since the last election on a Conservative vision for helping the world’s most vulnerable, including refugees.”

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan accused Ms. Leitch of “fear mongering.”

“Kellie Leitch continues to spout divisive dog-whistle rhetoric even after her own party rejected her and her ideas,” Ms. Kwan said.

Source: Kellie Leitch criticized over tweet attacking Syrian refugee program – The Globe and Mail

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