Federal stories: look away now
I am struck by two federal-level stories right now, so if you think this blog should not concern itself with these, you can look away now.
It’s significant that the Safe Third Country Agreement that has allowed Canada to turn refugee claimants back to the United States has been ruled unconstitutional by the Federal Court because it violates our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It’s a ruling that makes a pointed criticism of how the U.S. has been handling refugees. Canada has withdrawn its trust.
I wasn’t aware of the area of jurisdiction of the Federal Court so had to look that up.
Incidentally, I noticed the local CBC news announcer saying “illegal refugees” Wednesday and texted them to point out that it is not illegal for anyone to request refuge. Thursday morning they were at least saying “irregular refugees” when discussing e.g. crossings at Roxham Road.
The other federal story is the hot mess involving WE Charity, Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau. Without being an uncritical supporter of the federal Liberal party, I think it’s fair to say that in general I find their approach to government massively preferable to the Tories’. I mean, think of how much harder life would have been here had Covid-19 arrived during the Harper era.
But the Liberals get sloppy. The sponsorship scandal arguably let the whole country in for the nine interminable years of the Harper era. Now the WE Charity mess risks letting something similar happen, and during a minority government too. How smug can they be to assume nobody will ask questions about things like this? How stupid do they think we are?
Ian 21:03 on 2020-07-23 Permalink
“How stupid do they think we are?”
In my experience asking this question just makes us all feel sad.
It’s not that they think we are stupid, it’s that they think that what we think doesn’t matter, and the part that makes us sad is that they usually turn out to be right.
Kate 22:57 on 2020-07-23 Permalink
I don’t think anyone has written a song called Roxham Road yet. Where’s Stan Rogers when you need him?
david223 02:25 on 2020-07-24 Permalink
Safe Third Country will be reinstated or the feds will drop it but this court decision won’t stand – it’s a sovereign (ie. parliamentary) decision on border control, and it’s a treaty obligation. Very hard to imagine that (if it gets there) the Supreme Court would ever say that (1) the parliament can’t make that sort of law or (2) that such treaties can be abrogated by a court like that. “Hey, we’ve decided the Charter gives Canadians stronger labor protections than we read in this free trade agreement, so the treaty agreement is nul and void.” Not happening. Gets at the crazy stare decisis problem in this country though as the judges get increasingly goofy (“if you can’t do, judge”).
On the nomenclature, people need to get it straight: asylees are the people who show up and ask to get in; refugees are people who go the whole UNCHR process and get vacuumed up according to protocols and annual numbers. There’s no limit on asylees, but there is on refugees.
On the question of legality – it’s definitely illegal to lie to get into Canada, like straight up. In the same way that if you try to travel to France to, say, move there and illegally start working on a tourist visa, you’re instantly deportable. Asylum must be based one of a few (increasingly expansive) but clearly delimited grounds. Once you claim asylum, you get special protections (including free housing, food and money) until they’ve adjudicated your claim. This was a great policy in the old days: pre-internet, there were relatively few asylees, they were almost all worthy, and the courts system decided the cases quickly and cleanly. These days, different story, as even Trudeau has been forced to admit.
Chris 09:36 on 2020-07-24 Permalink
>texted them to point out that it is not illegal for anyone to request refuge
Quite right. But it *is* illegal to cross the border anywhere but an official border crossing.
>But the Liberals get sloppy
Interesting choice of words. Would you say merely “sloppy” if it was the Tories? I think corrupt is a better word frankly.
Joey 10:00 on 2020-07-24 Permalink
@Chris but the word “illegal” was used to alter the word “refugee” – does *illegally* crossing the border make a person an *illegal* refugee? Or does it make them a *leigitmate* refugee who contravened the law? It’s perhaps a subtle difference but a significant one, and Kate was right to point out to the CBC reporter/producer that they had confounded the two notions.
Chris 10:08 on 2020-07-24 Permalink
Joey, I’m not disputing the gist of that. As I said, Kate was “quite right”. However, some people argue the word ‘illegal’ should never be associated with them at all, and I can’t agree there. Their border crossing is an illegal act.
Kate 10:17 on 2020-07-24 Permalink
Chris, I said “sloppy” and I mean sloppy.
Realistically, every government is making deals all the time at various levels and contexts. Practical governing is always going to be a compromise with rectitude: if every rule were followed, every i dotted and every t crossed, progress would be so slow on every front that the public would be endlessly frustrated.
Government is not done hands-off impersonally between strangers, it’s always going to be a matter of having someone’s ear, tipping the wink to an old friend or a brother-in-law, quid pro quo in some means not written down. It’s human nature. It’s how business works and it’s how any large-scale human endeavour works. Is that corruption? Do it too openly and too excessively, yes. Do it circumspectly and with common sense, it’s simply how things get done.
Different parties have different styles in this as in other matters. The problem with the Liberals is specifically that they get sloppy about the scale of their deal-making, and don’t stop to think about how these things look if revealed, or even partly revealed, to their critics, and to the public.
The Liberals get sloppy. They make deals, they don’t even tell the boss, they forget their responsibility not to let the country slide too far to the right. That’s what’s making me mad about this scenario. Justin Trudeau knows the wolves are after him, he should have been keeping a sharp eye on this kind of thing developing on his watch, but he hasn’t been as smart about it as e.g. his father would’ve been.
We’ll probably have a Conservative government after the next general election. And that, my friends, is going to suck.
DeWolf 12:00 on 2020-07-24 Permalink
I’m astonished a CBC reporter would be saying something as plainly wrong as “illegal refugees” or “irregular refugees.” The terminology here is very clear: when you claim asylum you are an asylum seeker; when you are granted asylum you become a refugee. I guess they missed that lesson in journalism school.
Kate 16:36 on 2020-07-24 Permalink
DeWolf, it’s summer, CBC’s regulars are mostly on vacation. There have been some egregious switching errors, dead air and so on, besides the occasionally amateur-sounding news reading. Happens every year.
Chris 19:09 on 2020-07-24 Permalink
Kate: thanks for clarifying your view. You’re more generous to them than me. But anyway, I guess sloppy and corrupt aren’t really mutually exclusive either. 🙂
DeWolf, sure, but one might want to make the distinction between those that claim asylum properly by presenting themselves at a border crossing, and those that claim asylum after illegally crossing the border. It’s not clear to me how to do that in the fewest words possible, maybe “asylum seeker that crossed illegally” is as short as it can get. Perhaps we need a catchy acronym.