Canada should pull out of refugee pact with U.S. over Trump policies, says former Liberal foreign minister [Axworthy]

2025/11/14 Leave a comment

Not surprising that Axworthy would make that call. Substantively correct, of course, on his assessment of USA Trump administration policies. But impact would be huge and already dwarf the immigration and asylum systems, already subject to backlogs and considerable strain:

Former Liberal foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy says Canada should pull out of a long-standing refugee pact with the United States that leads to most asylum seekers arriving at the Canadian border being turned back. 

Mr. Axworthy, who is standing down as chair of the World Refugee & Migration Council on Thursday, said in an interview that President Donald Trump’s erosion of the rights of migrants in the U.S. means the country should no longer be considered a safe country for Canada to return asylum seekers to.

The Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S. took effect in 2004 and was later expanded to include not just official ports of entry but the entire land border. Under its terms, asylum seekers must claim refugee protection in the first of the two countries they arrive in. 

Most asylum seekers will be sent back if they arrive at the Canadian border after having first gone to the U.S., although there are exceptions, including forpeople facing the death penalty. 

Mr. Axworthy said Canada no longer has shared values with the U.S. under Mr.Trump. He said that “evidence is produced daily on every American newscast” that it is no longer a safe country for asylum seekers to return to.

“I mean, massive deportations without any due process. Clearly, major restrictions on who can come, a system in which there is virtually no appeal. The whole process of law has been shelved, if not totally put in the dumpster,” he said. …

Source: Canada should pull out of refugee pact with U.S. over Trump policies, says former Liberal foreign minister

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More commentary on the immigration levels plan

2024/10/28 Leave a comment

The Axworthy comment is particularly biting with respect to immigration and the [mis] functioning of cabinet government and ministerial responsibilities:

Argitis: Trudeau’s new policy upshot? First population decline since 1867: It was a spectacular economic policy error, followed by a spectacular reversal.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government announced on Thursday that it will implement sharp cuts to immigration flows, bringing Canada’s rapid population growth to an abrupt halt. The move, aimed at easing a housing crisis after an unprecedented increase in immigration over the past two years, could have significant effects on wages, interest rates, and the broader economy.

With immigration cuts, Ottawa is rethinking its economic principles: For many years, the federal Liberal Party made strong immigration a central plank of its economic plan for Canada, inviting scores of skilled workers to the country to slow demographic aging. In a policy U-turn, the government’s pro-growth ethos is now on pause.

Ottawa announced at a news conference Thursday that it’s cutting back immigration levels over the next three years, breaking a trend of steady increases. Combined with efforts to reduce temporary resident numbers, Canada’s population is set to post small declines in 2025 and 2026.

It amounts to a dramatic reversal. The country’s population grew by 3.2 per cent last year – the quickest pace since the late 1950s – or nearly 1.3 million people. Canada has ranked among the fastest-growing countries in recent years, easily outpacing its Group of Seven peers.

Axworthy | Justin Trudeau has infantilized his ministers. They need more power for our government to work: That trust has been shattered. Economic consultants from McKinsey promoted population growth as an economic lever. Business lobbies pushed for temporary foreign workers to meet labour shortages, and provincial governments used international students to solve funding shortfalls in higher education. Immigration policy became a tool to solve non-immigration issues, and ministerial leadership was sacrificed in favor of PMO decisions. The result is a system that is now crumbling under the weight of limited ministerial guidance  and misaligned priorities.

Wherry: Trudeau’s Liberals are trying to save the Canadian consensus on immigration — and their legacy: It’s too early to say whether the last few years have done any lasting damage to the public’s attitude toward immigration — or whether any future government will see something to be gained from cutting the flow of newcomers even more. But it’s possible that both the broad direction established by the Liberals and the basic imperatives that underpinned the Canadian consensus will prevail.

The federal government’s new targets represent a significant decrease from recent years. In each of the last three years, more than 400,000 people have become permanent residents; that annual intake number is now set to fall to 365,000 by 2027. But that still represents an increase over immigration levels during the previous Conservative government’s time in office — from 2006 to 2015, annual totals were never lower than 237,000 and never higher than 272,000.

While Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has heaped scorn on the Liberals over their handling of the immigration file, he also has stopped short of saying he would implement actual cuts. He has said only that he would use an unspecified “mathematical formula” — one that takes into account housing construction and access to health care services — to determine Canada’s immigration targets.

It’s also notable (though perhaps not surprising) that, the swing in public opinion notwithstanding, the federal government’s announcement this week has drawn some criticism and concern — from economists and business groups, but also provincial politicians.

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Axworthy et al: Canada’s plan to require visas from some Mexicans is a dangerous overreaction

2024/03/01 Leave a comment

Predictable reaction but not doing so would be an even more dangerous under reaction. And there is no reason why the visa requirement cannot be combined with longer term measures to reduce the root causes (no matter how sceptical I am about their chances of success):

….Before Mr. Trudeau’s government lifted it, Mexicans were deeply offended by Canada’s cumbersome visa requirement, which required visitors to endure a frustrating process operated by an inadequately staffed bureaucracy. Canadian businesses, farmers, and tourist operators also suffered heavily. But the untold damage of visa requirements may be even more significant today: more than 350,000 Mexicans visit Canada annually, and 2 million Canadians – many of them vacationers – travel to Mexico; the country has become the 10th-largest destination for Canadian investment, with some 2,000 Canadian companies now doing business there. Fortunately, it appears that the reimposed visa restrictions won’t affect those coming to Canada on study or work permits, as seasonal workers from Mexico are the linchpin of our agricultural sector, and academic exchanges between Mexican and Canadian institutions of higher learning have grown dramatically.

Still, the federal government seems to have chosen the quick and easy way out – a short-sighted decision amid growing election fever that fails to address the real roots of the problem.

Source: Canada’s plan to require visas from some Mexicans is a dangerous overreaction

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Axworthy and Rock: Here’s a better fix for Roxham Road

2023/03/29 Leave a comment

Predictable, and only workable in the context of the excessively high and increasing immigration levels. But not necessarily in the context of an immigration policy that takes into the account of the impact on housing, healthcare and infrastructure:

Ottawa pundits say that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau scored a political win by securing President Joe Biden’s agreement to renegotiate the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA). Henceforth, it will apply across the entire Canada-U.S. border, and asylum seekers can be turned away at any crossing point. Ottawa has thereby responded adroitly to Quebec Premier François Legault’s complaints about the flow of migrants entering Quebec at the infamous Roxham Road border crossing.

But there is something that neither the Prime Minister nor the President mentioned in their announcement: the impact of their decision on the men, women and children fleeing violence and persecution who had hoped to cross the Canadian border after feeling anything but safe in the United States. The vast majority are not in any way a threat to our security. They are ordinary people searching for sanctuary by putting themselves and their families at grave risk on a perilous journey, one they’d hoped would end with a Canadian border crossing.

We are left to imagine the bitter disappointment they will feel when instead of a portal to Canada they are met with a locked gate, a warning sign and no choice but to face the notoriously hostile American border security officials. As we have learned by watching the Mediterranean, some, in their desperation, will look for other points of entry to Canada by taking greater risks and putting their lives in danger. One “loophole” may have been closed, but others will no doubt appear.

“It’s what they deserve,” some will say. “Play by the rules! Don’t jump the queue!” But almost all of them are vulnerable survivors who escaped persecution and oppression simply to assert an ancient right – the right to asylum.

The right to seek asylum is codified in the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention. Before the STCA came into effect in 2002, under international law the convention obligated Canada to allow refugees to enter and remain here until the validity of their claim for asylum could be determined by a tribunal. Under the STCA, Canada effectively subcontracted this obligation to the United States.

There was another matter that neither our Prime Minister nor the President mentioned last week: the constitutional validity of the STCA is to be considered by the Supreme Court of Canada in the coming months. Depending on what the court decides, our government could end up not with a political win, but instead a major loss of credibility. The court could send Parliament back to the drawing board to legislate a new migration policy based on the paramountcy of human rights, instead of expediency.

It is fitting that the issue will hinge on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which has had a major influence on Canadian attitudes toward migration. Polls have consistently shown that Canadians have a strong attachment to an open system of immigration. While Mr. Biden and Mr. Trudeau spoke of shared values, there is one major exception: Canadians differ from Americans in our commitment to pluralism and welcoming newcomers. Why, then, are we doubling down on a policy so inconsistent with that distinctive characteristic?

There is a better way. As Minister of Immigration, Sean Fraser demonstrated Canada’s openness by setting a target to welcome half a million newcomers to Canada in 2025. However, he also announced that the number of refugees admitted would be reduced from 76,000 in 2023, to 73,000 in 2025. It is not clear whether the 73,000-person figure will now include the 15,000 Central American migrants Canada promised it would assist the U.S. in resettling during President Biden’s visit last week. In any case, we should strive to dedicate 20 per cent of our 2025 immigration goal to the resettlement of forcibly displaced people, taking in at least 100,000 in 2025. We can work to build up the capacity of our U.S. diplomatic posts, and our U.S.-Canada border crossing points, to receive, process and settle those with legitimate asylum claims.

Let’s take on the diplomatic task of building a collaborative, hemispheric migration network and devote the necessary resources to make it work. We can draw on our ability to convene, and our talent for negotiation, by inviting a group of like-minded governments, civil society groups, and international organizations to a summit aimed at reviving and strengthening the imperilled right to asylum. Migration is increasing, driven by climate change and conflict. We have to get things right at our border – politically and morally.

A border that assures security while respecting asylum seekers and welcoming migrants? Now that would be a real win for Canada.

Lloyd Axworthy is a former foreign minister and current chair of the World Refugee and Migration Council. Allan Rock is a former attorney-general and minister of justice, and a member of the World Refugee and Migration Council.

Source: Here’s a better fix for Roxham Road

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Axworthy and Rock: The Safe Third Country Agreement is unsafe – and unconstitutional

2022/10/12 Leave a comment

Reflections of former ministers (easier when no longer in government) but will see what the Supreme Court rules:

Former ministers As Canadians, we take pride in our well-deserved reputation as a caring society that offers a humane and generous response to those seeking asylum. Yet last week, the Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments that since 2004, Canadians have been complicit in the mistreatment of refugees arriving at our border from the United States.

At the heart of this issue is the 2004 Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), which requires that refugee claimants seek protection in the first country in which they arrive, be it Canada or the United States. On a practical level, this means that a person seeking asylum from a country other than Canada or the U.S. cannot seek protection in Canada if they have already landed in the U.S., and vice-versa. For the past 18 years, the STCA has operated on the premise that both countries are “safe” for refugees.

In July, 2020, a federal court judge determined that the STCA is unconstitutional and that Canada’s treatment of STCA returnees violates those provisions of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guarantee liberty and security of the person. The Federal Court of Appeal took a different view and upheld the STCA. Hence, the matter is now before our highest court for a final decision.

The problem here is not the agreement itself. In fact, similar arrangements have succeeded when all participating countries truly offer safety to asylum seekers. Instead, the problem is that the fundamental premise of the STCA no longer holds true. Put simply, the United States is not safe for many refugees. As a result, there are two distinct reasons why, in our respectful view, the Supreme Court should strike down the STCA.

First, while it is not the Court’s role to judge another country’s legal system, this case asks the Court to ensure that people who seek protection in Canada are not sent back to unjustifiable risk and real harm. Yet in returning people to foreseeable consequences in the U.S. – namely, detention in deplorable conditions and a serious risk of return to persecution – that is exactly what is occurring.

In the evidence before the Court, there are numerous examples of asylum seekers who were jailed in the U.S. after being turned away from Canada. They include a family with toddlers who were forbidden from sleeping with their parents; people kept for long periods in solitary confinement; and a 50-year-old woman forced to bathe naked in full view of security personnel.

Those who we send back to be detained in the U.S. face enormous barriers in claiming protection, leading some to be deported and persecuted in their home country. For example, the evidence in the case before the Court includes testimony from a Sri Lankan man who was turned away from Canada and then detained for a year and a half in the U.S. He was then deported and faced the exact persecution he feared – detention, interrogation and beatings by Sri Lankan authorities.

Second, our government has not been respecting the limits created by our own domestic laws. Canadian law implementing the STCA requires that our government monitor circumstances in the U.S. and only continue its designation as “safe” when it truly is. Here, the Court will hear the argument that Canada has neither adequately monitored what’s happening in the U.S. nor responded effectively to what it has seen. Given these circumstances, the Court will be asked to intervene.

Although Donald Trump is no longer in power, the reality for too many refugee claimants in the U.S. remains terrifying. We are by now all too familiar with last year’s images of U.S. border patrol agents on horseback chasing down Haitian migrants. And four years after the implementation of a disastrous policy at the U.S.-Mexico border that separated children from their parents, many are yet to be reunited. Immigration detention conditions in the U.S. remain deplorable, with staggeringly high rates of sexual assault and racially motivated attacks. Is Canada not properly monitoring these developments, or have we grown complacent in turning a blind eye to them? In either case, the STCA can no longer be allowed to stand.

It is important to note that even if the STCA is declared invalid, asylum seekers will still have to establish that they qualify for refugee status under international law. But they will no longer be automatically deemed ineligible for that status merely because they crossed into Canada from the United States.

It is said that the measure of a society is how it treats those on its margins. When vulnerable asylum seekers arrive at our border, they deserve to be treated lawfully and with dignity. We can no longer assume that if we send them back to the U.S., they will be safe. Indeed, the evidence establishes the contrary. It is time for us to abandon the STCA, an agreement no longer worthy of its name.

Lloyd Axworthy is chair of the World Refugee and Migration Council and a former Canadian foreign minister. Allan Rock is president emeritus of the University of Ottawa, and former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations.

Source: The Safe Third Country Agreement is unsafe – and unconstitutional

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Canadian-led movement aims to seize assets from dictators to remedy refugee crisis

2018/11/12 Leave a comment

Hard to argue with the principles behind this approach but hard to see how it will be implemented in practice:
A Canadian-led international movement seized with stanching the flow of refugees wants to use an untapped source of cash to address the global crisis: the billions languishing in the frozen bank accounts of dictators and despots.

The proposal will be one of the main recommendations of the World Refugee Council, a self-appointed body of two dozen global political figures, academics and civil-society representatives led by former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy.

“We’ve put forward a proposition that where there are frozen assets they should be unfrozen through a proper legal process and reallocated to help the victims of the crime and corruption and instability that the bad guys create,” said Axworthy. “It’s a morality play. The bad guys have to pay to help their victims.”

The World Bank estimates the pool of cash to be worth $10 billion to $20 billion per year, Axworthy said in an interview.

The council was established last year by a Canadian think-tank, the Centre for International Governance Innovation, to find new ways to deal with the 21st century’s record-setting migration crisis — the 68.5 million displaced people driven from their homes by war, famine and disaster.

The United Nations will turn its attention to solving the problem at a special session later this fall, and the council plans to offer its input, using the weight of the last Canadian foreign minister to chair a Security Council meeting.

The UN has acknowledged in stark terms that as the number of homeless and stateless people continues to grow around the globe, their suffering is increased by the shrinking pool of money available to help them.

‘Proceeds put for the public good’

Axworthy says there are fundamental structural flaws in how the world’s institutions are set up to cope with the unprecedented forced migration of people, and a big one is how the bills are paid. The system is based on charity — the benevolent donations of people, countries and businesses — and is not sustainable, Axworthy said.

An October report by the United Nations refugee agency said it expected to raise 55 per cent of the $8 billion it needs to support refugees and internally displaced people this year.

Axworthy said the courts in several countries can be used to seize funds that have been frozen there. Canada, the United States and Britain have all passed legislation allowing them to impose sanctions on individual human-rights abusers. These “Magnitsky laws” are named after a Russian tax accountant who died in prison after exposing a massive fraud by state officials there.

The world could start spending the “tens of billions of dollars moulding away in a variety of banks and other places, purloined money from the warlords, from the bad guys, the dictators, the authoritarians,” Axworthy said.

Irwin Cotler, a former Liberal justice minister and human-rights lawyer who has championed Magnitsky-style legislation, said in a separate interview that these laws can allow to go beyond freezing funds, because once the assets are seized, there’s no point to returning them to their corrupt owners.

“What you want to do is have the proceeds put for the public good,” said Cotler, the founder of the Montreal-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.

Legal precedent

Canada’s first round of sanctions under its Magnitsky Act targeted people in Russia, South Sudan and Venezuela, including Nicolas Maduro, the South American country’s president.

The refugee council’s most recent report, released last month, focused on the displacement of millions of people from Venezuela. That report urged the United States to take a leading role in seizing billions of “ill-gotten” assets in the country, including the $2 billion that the U.S. Treasury Department estimates has been stolen from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company.

Fen Hampson, who co-wrote the report and is head of the global security program at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, suggested governments need to go beyond their various Magnitsky laws to repurpose the seized assets of “Maduro and some of his henchmen … to help victims and the host countries that are reeling under this growing refugee and migration crisis.”

The Magnitsky Act, named after a Russian lawyer and auditor who was arrested on trumped-up charges and died in prison, has Russia threatening retaliation against Canada. The proposed law targets those responsible for human rights abuses and corruption. 2:15

The report said there is legal precedent to do this: a civil case against the son of the dictatorial leader of Equatorial Guinea resulted in a $30-million judgement, $20 million of which was later used by a charity to help the country’s people.

In Yemen, where most of the inhabitants of the port city of Hodeida were forced to flee Friday as Saudi Arabia’s three-year war on Shiite rebels continued, the UN World Food Program’s country director said a massive cash influx is needed to repair the battered economy and feed a population on the verge of starvation.

Stephen Anderson said it’s up to others, higher up in the UN, to decide whether that money should be siphoned from a warlord’s frozen bank account.

“We’re 100-per-cent voluntary funded,” Anderson said. “The economic issues need to be addressed urgently because that’s affecting the entire population of Yemen. They were the poorest in the Middle East before the conflict so there’s no safety net.”

Source: Canadian-led movement aims to seize assets from dictators to remedy refugee crisis

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More federal action needed to restore lost Canadian citizenship rights: Rock and Axworthy

2017/03/29 Leave a comment

Former Ministers Alan Rock and Lloyd Axworthy argue in favour of the proposed expansion of voting rights for non-resident Canadians in Bill C-33 and repeal of the first generation limit to the transmission of  Canadian citizenship.

The main weaknesses in their arguments:

  • Reinforces a global, more instrumental concept of citizenship, without a meaningful connection to Canada;
  • C-33 only requires a citizen to have been born in Canada in order to have voting rights, irrespective of how little time spent in Canada;
  • Repealing the first generation limit means a further weakening of the meaningfulness of citizenship and connection to Canada, as again the second or subsequent generations could retain citizenship without having lived in Canada;
  • Immigrants wishing to become citizens to be physically present in Canada (four out of six years currently, three out of six as proposed in Bill C-6) and retention after the first generation should, at a minimum, require residency;
  • Like others, they exaggerate the number of Canadians with connections to Canada. Passport data shows about 630,000 active non-resident adult passport holders, not the 2 to 3 million cited. This is a minimal connection test (taxation data shows about 130,000);
  • The exemption to the first generation limit for public servants serving abroad recognizes the fact that they work directly for the government, rotate regularly back to Canada, and pay Canadian taxes. This is quite different from those who spend their entire life abroad, do not return regularly for more than short visits, and for the most part, don’t pay Canadian taxes; and,
  • Largely targeted towards globally mobile professionals, Ministers Rock and Axworthy’s proposal fails to consider the implications for the broader population, whether it be the many non-resident Canadians who simply live their lives abroad without making “important global contributions” or resident Canadians who may feel that granting citizenship without residence devalues the meaning of being Canadian. 

    Their proposal is largely targeted towards those globally mobile professionals without considering the implications to the broader population of non-resident Canadians.

Canada’s former Minister of Democratic Institutions, Maryam Monsef, recently observed that in the 21st century, there are many good reasons why Canadians choose to live overseas, and that there is no reason to create barriers to their participation in democratic processes.

We agree, but would go further. Canadians living and working overseas face government barriers not only in participating in democratic processes, but also in passing along citizenship. These must be addressed.

The occasion for the comments made by Ms. Monsef – recently appointed Minister of Status of Women – was the introduction of legislation to repeal provisions of the federal Fair Elections Act. Adopted in 2014, this statute provides, amongst other things, that Canadians living overseas can vote only within five years of leaving Canada, and must have the stated intention of returning home.

In repealing this provision through Bill C-33, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act, the federal government will remove one important penalty for Canadians living and working overseas. However, it is overlooking a potentially even greater disincentive.

A little-known 2006 amendment to the Citizenship Act limits Canadian citizenship to just the first-generation of children born to or adopted by Canadians who live outside Canada. Thus, children born to or adopted by Canadian parents who are travelling, studying, or working abroad become citizens of Canada at birth or at the time of adoption, but their children are not entitled to Canadian citizenship if they are born outside Canada.

This is harmful for at least two reasons.

First, the amendment to the Citizenship Act strikes us as discriminatory, and out of step with the principle that “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,” as articulated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The amendment effectively creates two classes of Canadians: those who can pass along citizenship to their children and those who cannot. Furthermore, the amendment discriminates in favour of federal employees and military personnel who serve outside Canada. Under the current legislation, they are explicitly exempted from the limits on citizenship imposed by the amendment.

Second, Canada is deeply interconnected economically, socially and culturally with communities and countries around the globe. Canadians have a long history of important global contributions in international finance, peacekeeping, United Nations’ service, and humanitarian action, to name a few. We should be encouraging Canadians to venture beyond our borders to contribute to the broader global community, whether this be as students, travellers, or professionals – now, more than ever. Unfortunately, the current provisions of the Citizenship Act may have the opposite effect, by deterring Canadians from going overseas to work.

To date, the government has sought to justify this provision based on “simplicity and transparency.” We respectfully submit that any administrative advantages are substantially outweighed both by the principles of fairness and equity required by Canadian law, and by the importance of maintaining Canada’s standing in, and contributions to, the community of nations.

In terms of scope of impact, it is worth considering that at any point in time, 2-3 million Canadians live, work, or travel overseas. If even 0.5 per cent of these people have children overseas, this would amount to 10,000-15,000 children whose rights are limited and whose options are narrowed by this legislation each year. These numbers underscore the urgency and importance of addressing this matter quickly.

As the Government moves to restore voting rights to Canadians living overseas, it should also restore another fundamental birthright by allowing foreign-born descendants of Canadians who were themselves born outside our country to begin life with Canadian citizenship.

Source: More federal action needed to restore lost Canadian citizenship rights – The Globe and Mail

Filed under C-33, Citizenship, Citizenship Act Tagged with ,