MPs have voted to dilute a federal plan to detain high-risk immigrants in federal prison after an outcry by Senators and human-rights groups, restricting the policy to people deemed to require a high degree of supervision and control, including sex offenders, terrorists and violent gang members.
MPs on the finance committee also voted down proposals in the government’s omnibus budget bill to toughen up Canada’s asylum regime and speed up the processing of refugee claims.
NDP and Bloc Québécois MPs voted to quash the government’s proposed asylum reforms, including the suspension of refugee proceedings if the claimant is not in Canada.
The changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, added onto the budget bill, would have also allowed for automatic deportation orders in some circumstances.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller hit out at the Bloc Québécois in the House of Commons Wednesday for voting with other opposition parties to quash measures speeding up the asylum claims process, which the Bloc has called for.
He said it was “hypocritical” of the Bloc to vote to block reforms that would have “sped things up.” The government agreed in the finance committee to remove the entire section on the asylum changes after losing a series of votes.
The clause in the budget bill would have also eliminated the “designated countries of origin” regime, which critics say has discriminated against tens of thousands of refugee claimants on the grounds that they came from a list of countries considered safe.
The “designated country of origin” policy, used by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada between 2010 and 2019, was created by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government to make refugee claims challenging for asylum seekers from a list of countries deemed to have good human-rights records.
The budget bill, after consideration in committee, must go back to the House of Commons where the government may try to apply pressure on the NDP and Bloc to reverse their decision to vote down the asylum reforms.
But the government said the amendments it accepted allowing immigrants to be sent to federal prison took into account the concerns of advocates, such as human-rights groups.
NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said the proposals on asylum reform and detention of immigrants in federal prison “were poison pills that were inappropriately snuck into the omnibus budget bill by the Liberal government.”
“These proposed changes should have been considered transparently as standalone legislation,” she told The Globe and Mail.
The Senate’s national security committee introduced a report this week saying the government proposal to hold high-risk immigrants in federal prisons would “make significant changes to Canada’s immigration regime.”
The committee said it should be removed from the budget bill and reintroduced in a separate bill, because Parliament has not had sufficient time to study it.
Senator Pierre Dalphond, who this week drew up a motion asking the House of Commons to remove the proposals from the Budget Implementation Act, said he was concerned by the “hugely discretionary process” in deciding who qualifies as high-risk and could be incarcerated in a federal prison. But he welcomed changes made by MPs, saying they improved the government proposal.
People facing deportation deemed to be high-risk – including those who pose a threat to public safety – would be incarcerated in federal prison in “immigrant stations” run by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). The newly created sections of the prisons would mean immigrants would not be mixed with criminal inmates.
Unlike convicted criminals, there is no legal limit to how long immigrants can be locked up.
The changes will mean that to qualify for detention the minister himself – rather than the CBSA – must deem that a person needs to be detained and requires “a high degree of supervision and control.” Among those listed who could be incarcerated are sex offenders, people found with weapons, drug dealers and people displaying violent or aggressive behaviour.
The move to allow use of federal prisons to incarcerate immigrants follows the decision by provinces to end immigration-detention agreements with the CBSA to house immigrants in their jails this year.
Jean-Sébastien Comeau, spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, said the amendments mean that the minister must now consider certain factors before determining if an individual should be detained in a CBSA-run immigration station, which will be owned by Correctional Service Canada.
“They take into account concerns raised by stakeholders and advocates, and will ensure greater accountability in the use of immigration stations,” he said, adding that the amendments set out a five-year sunset clause following royal assent on the use of immigration stations.
This would mean approval would be needed to continue locking up immigrants in federal prisons.
At the end of May, there were 184 people in detention awaiting removal from Canada, with 27 of them in provincial jails. The vast majority of them have convictions for serious crimes, including sexual assault, murder and armed robbery, a letter from Mr. LeBlanc to senators said.