ICYMI – UN calls out Ottawa over lengthy immigration detention stays

2017/09/07 Leave a comment

No major surprises:

A United Nations committee has urged Ottawa to limit the use of immigration detention and drop a bilateral pact that turns asylum-seekers back at the U.S. land border.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination makes the recommendations in its recent review of how Canada’s government policies and programs are affecting minority groups.

“The Committee recommends . . . immigration detention is only undertaken as a last resort after fully considering alternative non-custodial measures. Establish a legal time limit on the detention of migrants,” said the report released in Geneva this week.

Canada should also “rescind or at least suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States of America to ensure that all individuals who attempt to enter the State party through a land border are provided with equal access to asylum proceedings,” the report said.

Ottawa has been under intense criticism for its handling of migrants in detention and the surge of asylum seekers attempting to cross into Canada at unmarked points along the U.S. border.

A Star investigation, Caged by Canada, this year into immigration detention in Canada found a system that indefinitely warehouses non-citizens away from public scrutiny in high-security criminal detention facilities.

Some of the detainees are former permanent residents who were convicted for crimes and await deportation. Others are failed refugees waiting for removal or people deemed inadmissible to Canada, flight risks or dangers to the public. More than 100 of the detainees had spent at least three months in jail, and one-third of them have been held for more than a year.

“We raised the issue of indefinite detention of non-status immigrants and their children, and the committee has listened,” said Shalini Konanur, director of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario.

The Safe Third Country agreement, introduced in 2004, prevents refugees from making asylum claims in both the U.S. and Canada, which clogs the system. Claimants are barred from entering the other country for asylum unless they belong to one of four exemption groups.

However, the ban does not apply to those who sneak through unmarked points along the border, pushing some asylum-seekers to trek through no man’s land, mostly commonly in Quebec, B.C. and in Manitoba, where hundreds walked in the dead of winter this year, sometimes overnight, to Emerson.

“Given the current xenophobic political climate in the U.S.A., it is no surprise that the committee has called on Canada to rescind or at least temporarily suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement. Canada cannot turn a blind eye to what is happening down south,” said Debbie Douglas of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants.

A Harvard University Law School review in February also warned about the negative effect of President Donald Trump’s administration on refugees and urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to consider pulling out from the bilateral deal.

Hursh Jaswal, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen, said Canada has a robust asylum system and the Safe Third Country Agreement is an important tool for the orderly handling of refugee claims on both sides of the border.

“While the executive order affected the U.S. system for resettling refugees from abroad, it did not impact the U.S. system for handling domestic asylum claims,” Jaswal said. “Our government is monitoring the situation closely and will carefully evaluate any new developments for potential changes to the domestic asylum system in the U.S.”

On immigration detention, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the government is committed to improving the system.

“We need to minimize the use of provincial jails and try to avoid, as much as humanly possible, the holding of children in detention,” said Scott Bardsley, adding that Ottawa is investing $138 million to expand alternatives to detention, improving detention conditions, providing better mental health services and reducing reliance on provincial jails for immigration holding.

“Under the new government, the number of immigration detentions has decreased, despite an increase in visitors to Canada,” Bardsley said.

The UN committee also raised alarm over the treatment of migrant workers in Canada.

“Although the temporary foreign worker program conducts inspections, temporary migrant workers are reportedly susceptible to exploitation and abuses, and are sometimes denied basic health services, and employment and pension benefits to which they may make contributions,” it warned.

The report called on Ottawa to collect race-based economic and social data to improve monitoring and evaluation of its programs that aim at eliminating racial discrimination and disparities.

On a positive note, the committee praised Ontario for establishing the anti-racism directorate; Quebec, for passing a bill on combating hate speech and incitement to violence; and Ottawa for its condemnation of Islamophobia, as well as progress made in addressing discrimination against Indigenous peoples, resettling 46,000 Syrian refugees and restoring health care funding for refugees.

Source: UN calls out Ottawa over lengthy immigration detention stays | Toronto Star

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

NGOs tell UN panel Canada is failing on racism: Paradkar

2017/08/15 Leave a comment

Shree Paradkar reports on the NGO critique of Canada’s record in combatting racism (Debbie Douglas of OCASI, Avvy Go of the Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, Shalini Konanur, of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario).

While their points are largely valid, they portray a completely bleak picture when surely the reality is more nuanced. This may be the nature of the process when their role is to prevent an alternative view to the more positive portrayal of the government response.

But it is surprising, given that all three are Ontario based, that they do not mention the province’s anti-racism strategy as an example that the federal government should emulate.

And surely, is the change of federal language towards diversity and inclusion, the increased diversity of appointments, and other policy initiatives of the current government not worthy of note, while allowing for criticism where needed?

Every day when I read news from around the world, I have occasion to feel thankful to be in Canada.

Yet, I was surprised this weekend to hear many Canadians, revolted by the events unfolding in Charlottesville, Va., say: At least we’re not as bad. In reality, our history, too, involves slavery, indentured labour, brutal oppression and colonization. Our country, too, has thriving right-wing extremism.

It’s not Canadian to be flashy and to shout out our deeds from the rooftops. The flip side of this modesty is, when history judges those actions to be misdeeds, we are able to dismiss them as trivial because they were not as glorified as they were down south.

The dismissal allows us to masks the past and ease our collective conscience.

It’s precisely a recognition of those past misdeeds, their present consequences and a reckoning of current laws that a group of prominent Canadian NGOs are seeking in Geneva Monday, when they ask a UN body to hold Canada’s feet to the fire for failing to keep its promises to end discrimination.

The Colour of Poverty — Colour of Change and its members are asking the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) to recognize how Canada has “failed to comply with its international human rights obligations . . . and domestic human rights laws.”

“Racism is a matter of life and death,” for Indigenous peoples, their joint statement says, citing dismal socio-economic health indicators, suicides, murders and disappearances of thousands of people.

Both Indigenous and Black people are disproportionately poor and disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system.

“This is not the first time we brought this concern to the CERD committee, and yet very little has changed in more than a decade of our submitting shadow reports,” said Debbie Douglas, executive director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI).

The NGOs are calling for a national action plan on racism for Canada that would commit to combating discrimination in hiring, and funding anti-racist organizations.

Chiefly, it is seeking the collection of “disaggregated” data across all government departments.

This kind of data collection that specifies identities such as race, gender or disability is the minimum Canada needs so it can measure the impact of its policies whether in health or housing or jobs.

How do you try to solve a problem when you can’t quantify it?

“For instance,” says Avvy Yao-Yao Go, clinic director at the Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, “Under the Federal Employment Equity Act, the federal government has data on the representation of women, ‘visible minority,’ Indigenous peoples and people with disabilities in the federal public service.

“However, we do not know, for instance, of the “visible minority” categories, what are the percentages for people of African descent versus people of Chinese descent versus people of South Asian descent. Or under (the category of) women, how many are women of colour and from which communities.” [Comment: Actually we do from census data – see my Federal Employment Equity and Religious Minorities in the Public Service)]

Or, take Canada’s immigration law that allows people detained for immigration purposes to be detained indefinitely. More than 6,000 people were held in 2016-17, the agencies say, although more than 90 per cent of them were not considered a security threat.

“We recently participated in a case in federal court that sought to challenge indefinite detention,” says Shalini Konanur, executive director of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario.

“During that case we spoke with several detainees, and the vast majority were racialized. Currently, there is no race-based data being collected about detainees but we know anecdotally that racialized persons in Canada are disproportionately impacted by indefinite detention.”

The NGOs also want the federal and provincial government to remove barriers to the recognition of international training, and to amend the Ontario Human Rights Code to stop discrimination based on police data.

They are drawing attention to domestic laws that discriminate against specific groups.

In addition to immigrant detainees affected by law, migrant farm workers and caregivers such as nannies — the majority of whom are people of colour — are also vulnerable.

Migrant agricultural workers do not have access to permanent resident status. As for caregivers, their once guaranteed pathway to permanent residence was revoked in 2014.

Both groups have their work permit tied to a specific employer leaving them vulnerable to exploitation.

“While migrant workers contribute to social entitlement programs in Canada, their temporary status largely precludes them from accessing these programs,” said Amy Casipullai, an OCASI staffer.

The UN committee is expected to release its review on Aug. 25.

Source: NGOs tell UN panel Canada is failing on racism: Paradkar | Toronto Star

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination: Difference in Tone

2014/03/22 Leave a comment

Quite a different approach from Minister Alexander compared to Minister Kenney. Incredibly bureaucratic and normal:

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) coordinates the federal activities related to the implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). The ICERD is a United Nations Convention that promotes and encourages universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction based on race, sex, language or religion.

Our role

CIC’s role includes:

  • coordinating federal input to periodic reports to the Committee on the Elimination of Racism (CERD) on Canada’s implementation of the ICERD;
  • leading Canada’s periodic appearances for the presentation of reports to the CERD, a committee of independent experts that monitors implementation of the ICERD; and
  • consulting with partner departments regarding progress in responding to recommendations from the CERD.

CIC activities

Under the mandate of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act, CIC works to foster the full participation and integration of Canadians from all ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds into society. CIC’s multiculturalism activities in support of the ICERD implementation include:

The CIC Settlement Program also supports locally based approaches to remove barriers as well as help build welcoming and inclusive communities. The wide range of stakeholders involved with the program allows projects to address many different challenges to integration, including those faced in the workplace, schools and community members at large.

Human Rights.

But of course, Minister Kenney in his role as Multiculturalism Minister also issued a statement, more political in tone than the bureaucratic one under Minister Alexander. Not a bad division of roles but even Minister Kenney’s current statement below is subdued compared to previous years:

“The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is a day observed in like-minded countries around the world to reaffirm our shared commitment to combatting racism.

“Canadians are rightly proud of our country’s successful pluralism, fostering a society where all citizens, regardless of ethnicity, faith, or country of origin, have a place.

“Our government continues to be actively engaged in efforts to fight discrimination both at home and abroad.

“Throughout the past year, Canada maintained our status as a world leader in the global fight against anti-Semitism as the Chair of theInternational Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Our government will continue to work closely with the IHRA to promote Holocaust education, remembrance and research.

“Moreover, Canada’s Office of Religious Freedom continues to advocate for the rights of persecuted religious communities around the world.

“As Minister for Multiculturalism, I encourage all Canadians to take a moment on this day to reflect on the importance of our country’s values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”

In contrast, the 2013 press release had much more involvement and direction by the Minister:

“The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is an opportunity for Canadians to join with other freedom-loving people around the world in reaffirming our commitment to reject and eliminate all forms of racial discrimination.

“While we can be proud of our own country’s successful pluralism, we need to ensure that all Canadian citizens reject extremism, do not import ancient enmities, and continue to embrace Canada’s tradition of ordered liberty, which guarantees the equality of all citizens under the law.

“Through initiatives such as the Office of Religious Freedom, our Government will also continue to condemn acts of racial hatred around the world. These acts often accompany the targeting of religious communities.

“As Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, I encourage all Canadians to continue to uphold the fundamental values of our free, democratic and peacefully pluralist society and to reject all forms of unjust discrimination.”

Minister Kenney issues statement to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (2014)

Minister Kenney issues statement on the International Day (2013)

And lastly, the Canadian Race Relations Foundation continues to align itself with the government’s priorities:

Today the CRRF is proud to launch a new resource area dedicated to “Imported Conflict”, an emergent arena of study and public discourse that encompasses immigration, citizenship, multiculturalism and approaches to social and economic integration, and is essential to our understanding of what still needs to be done to promote integration and civic participation of Canadians of all origins.

The first document to be included in the special resource collection will be the Mosaic Institute’s recently released report, The Perception & Reality of “Imported Conflict” in Canada, and its abundant resources. The report is the culmination of a two-year study of Canadians’ perceptions and concerns about “imported conflict” in Canada. The report provides an interesting perspective as an initial endeavour, and the CRRF looks forward to examining and gathering further research in this area.

CRRF announces new initiative on International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,