Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Pushing Status for All as Ottawa Ramps up Deportations

 


By Matthew Behrens

            When Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino announced last week a possible “one-time” pathway to permanent residence for some non-status workers on the frontlines of Covid-19, Ottawa Roma refugee, seamstress, and mother of five, Celina Urbanowicz, was seated at her sewing machine, churning out hand-sewn masks.

            Since the beginning of the pandemic, Urbanowicz has produced for free countless thousands of the masks for hospitals, daycares, and long-term care homes that have never had enough personal protective equipment. The masks became so popular that health care workers earlier this summer took to social media, both trying to ascertain the identity of this secret angel supplying them with colourful and well-fitting masks, and hoping to order more.

            As rallies across the land this past weekend pointed out, Mendicino’s offer, while welcome, did not go far enough. Indeed, Urbanowicz, a 23-year resident of Canada who has lived here without status because of legal errors and other barriers that were the fault of others, will not have the doorway opened to her.  Instead, she is fighting deportation to the virulently right-wing atmosphere in Poland, where Amnesty International has concluded a woman of her profile faces "multiple risks on account of their intersectional vulnerabilities stemming from their identity as a Roma woman, wife of a Muslim man, and as the mother of a lesbian woman.”

            Indeed, the newly re-elected Polish President Andrzej Duda and his right-wing Law and Justice party have stoked a neofascist movement that has led to the declaration of LGBTQ-free zones throughout the country, pulling out of the Istanbul Convention on ending violence against women, and an increase in anti-Roma violence.

            Urbanowicz’s case is not isolated. She is one of hundreds of thousands of non-status people who live in the shadows of this country, subjected to economic exploitation (especially as migrant farm workers) and often denied the safety and services others enjoy. While Canada recently announced plans to welcome up to 390,000 immigrants annually by 2022, it continues to pursue an intensely cruel policy of surveillance, detention, and deportation of a significant population who pay taxes, contribute to their communities, and have built lives here.

 

Status For All

If Canada’s immigration bureaucrats were to work in a logical fashion, they would realize that the first cohort of hundreds of thousands of potential permanent residents are already here and, in many cases, have been for years. Why spend hundreds of millions annually forcing communities to live in fear, trying to break up families via detention and deportation (often over the kinds of minor procedural errors and systemic issues that are rife throughout the system) when they can grant permanent resident status to everyone now? There is zero evidence that any harm would result from such a blanket offer to come from the shadows; if anything, it would prevent the harm that comes with terrorizing and breaking up families and returning them to persecution.

Mendicino’s Covid-themed offer is problematic on a number of other levels. It was couched in the framework of racist Canadian benevolence that fails to acknowledge that humans caring for one another is a universal trait: “And despite the fact that they themselves were very vulnerable, (they) put themselves at a high risk to help others in their community,” he said. “Even though they don’t possess Canadian papers that give them permanent resident status or immigration status, they demonstrated a uniquely Canadian quality by looking out for one other.”  

The idea that those who have lived lives at risk and undergone often difficult, traumatic journeys to get here as refugees should have to undertake additional risk to win the favour of the Immigration Minister speaks to the heartlessness at the core of the system. Indeed, in a statement that makes Mendicino eligible for the Gaslighter of the Year award, he told the Toronto Star: “What makes this group so unique and so special is the adversity that they had overcome just to get here.”  

But everyone who comes here faces that adversity, both in the journey and, all too often, in the struggle to survive here, with only a patchwork of services and advocates available to help them navigate the system. And the fact that only certain “designated” occupations fit this bill is yet another discriminatory measure. Hady Anne, an asylum seeker from Mauritius and member of Solidarité Sans Frontières, told the Toronto Star: “It’s saying there are people who are ‘essential’ and there are others that aren’t,” noting that the measure does not include undocumented residents, agricultural workers, international students and refugees working as janitors and in other jobs in long-term-care facilities.  “It’s a discriminatory measure that brings us backwards in the defence of human rights.”

 

Refugees as Inventory Items

Mendicino’s surface-only benevolence reflects a deeper problem: those who have come to Canada seeking safety and a better life are rarely viewed by government bureaucracies as human beings. Rather, they are inventory items that need to be shuffled from one file to another. This was made pretty clear in the Auditor General’s (AG) July, 2020 investigation of the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) which, like the brutal American ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the focus of an excellent Netflix documentary, Immigration Nation), acts as a kind of Gestapo that hunts vulnerable people in an effort to meet deportation quotas.

In 2018/19 fiscal, the CBSA spent $34 million to rip apart families and execute deportations. The AG describes the majority of those found inadmissible to Canada as “failed asylum claimants,” along with a smaller number of visitors who overstay their visas or those with alleged criminality. The latter is a grossly broad term that fails to account for the racial profiling and over-policing of racialized communities that underscores the policing/judicial system. It is also minuscule, 2,800 cases, or less than 1.5% of the total. Those individuals on the list face double punishment, as most have already served either time or probation for their alleged offences.

Meanwhile, CBSA tries to deport individuals within a year of a final negative decision, largely because if individuals manage to stay here longer than 365 days, they may access a pre-removal risk assessment (whose success rate is less than 5%). The CBSA hopes to increase deportations to at least 10,000 annually, and received an additional $36 million, beginning in 2019/20, to keep up with its mandate of misery and reach a hoped for 15,500 annual deportations by 2022.

The AG’s report is written in the cold, actuarial language that removes all humanity, insisting that deportation “protects the integrity and fairness of Canada’s immigration system,” even though the system itself is rife with a lack of integrity and fairness that grows not from those who come here but from racism, institutional bias, incompetence, and repeated failure to uphold both its domestic and international law commitments. CBSA also says removal of refugees is “one of the most effective ways to deter those who might otherwise seek to abuse the system.” In other words, like the Trump administration, the goal is not to make it safe for those at risk, but rather to punish those who, for whatever reason, cannot win their cases. Those reasons often range from an inability to find a translator or competent lawyer, missing a checkbox on an application form, not having a “you have been tortured” certificate from the torturers in the country they fled, biased decision makers at the Immigration and Refugee Board, or submitting a document a day late. They are deemed “failed” asylum seekers when in fact, they simply could not win against a system that too often fails them. 

The AG says there are about 50,000 “enforceable cases” in the CBSA inventory, and bemoans an institutional incompetence that, while perhaps good news for those trying to survive here without fear of being deported, simply extends the period of uncertainty and living in the shadows that mark the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The CBSA is cited for  “poor case management” and failure to complete annual investigations. It is also taken to task for its sloppiness in maintaining a “national removal inventory” (language one would associate with toxic waste, but here it’s meant to describe everyone from women fleeing abusive men and individuals targeted by governments for their ethnic or religious heritage or political affiliation to peasant farmers forced off their land and threatened with death for trying to stop Canadian corporations from building a dangerous mine or megadam in their home community).

 

CBSA’S Poor Data Management

As of April 2019, the CBSA had 197,000 removal orders in its “inventory.” Among them are 132,500 unenforceable removal orders (individuals awaiting word on asylum claims and permanent residence applications) and 14,500 “stayed” cases where deportation is legally prohibited. Under the “enforceable” category, there were 15,300 “working inventory” individuals who CBSA was “required to remove,” and 34,700 where individuals with immigration warrants could not be located. The AG notes the numbers are approximations due to CBSA’s poor “removal data quality.”

One might find that CBSA’s incompetence and inability to find thousands of those who continue seeking safety is a mixed blessing. It means not being immediately returned to dangerous conditions in their homes countries, but it also forces them to continue living in the shadows, where there is more risk of exploitation. CBSA’s inability to work as professionals also has incredibly dangerous consequences. The AG found 3,200 cases in the working inventory that were “actionable, meaning they had no known impediment to advancing to removal. However, because of poor data quality, we found that actionable cases were not reliably identified – some cases were wrongly flagged as actionable, while many more cases were actionable (‘no impediments’ but were not flagged.)” In human terms, what this means is refugees with every right to be here as their case is being determined had been wrongfully labeled as removable, meaning they could be picked up, detained, and possibly deported before anyone realizes the huge error committed. The trauma and potential lethality of such sloppiness is incalculable. The AG found through sampling  that at least 500 cases in the working inventory were not enforceable; those numbers may in fact be far higher. CBSA ultimately does not care whether it removes those with a right to be here because its mandate is to hit its quotas. (Unfortunately, the proroguing of Parliament meant that proposed legislation to introduce oversight of the CBSA was eliminated and must begin anew at a future date).

In the sick evaluation of whether or not such an agency meets its mandate, the AG noted that while the 2018/19 removal year boasted some 9,500 cases, 2,800 had been refused entry at the border, which means “the agency removed 6,700 cases from its working or wanted inventories that fiscal year, making little impact on their levels.” Notably, CBSA confirmed with the AG that “cases in its wanted inventory are generally considered a low risk to public safety and are not an agency priority.” In other words, kids and families who, even though they pose no risk, are nonetheless a juicy target to meet quotas.

 

Trudeau and Trump’s Concentration Camps

Who, exactly, is being turned away by Canada under its various border enforcement mechanisms? Earlier this month, the Federal Court of Canada released a key decision that summarized ten refugee cases while finding that the so-called Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) with the USA violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Court said it was clear that Canada is actively turning away individuals seeking asylum here with the full knowledge that those refugees will be immediately detained upon return to the USA, where standards for refugee acceptance continue to decline and conditions for those behind bars are cruel.

Under the agreement, anyone arriving at a land port of entry (POE) from the U.S. cannot make a refugee claim in Canada because of the assumption that the US is “safe” for refugees. Yet, as the Court notes, “claimants arriving from the US by air, by sea or between land POEs, are eligible to have their refugee claims” heard.

Among those who were part of the challenges to the STCA were individuals and families escaping danger in El Salvador, Syria and Ethiopia. Ms Mustefa, for example, was turned away after 30 hours of interrogation in Quebec and immediately jailed for a month, with the first week in solitary confinement.

Mustefa described solitary as a “terrifying, isolating and psychologically traumatic experience,” and, as a Muslim, reports she was served pork even though she informed guards she could not eat it.  As a result, she lost 15 pounds by skipping meals.

A Syrian family who tried to walk across the border at the Roxham Road opening in the New York/Quebec border were told by the CBSA they would be arrested if they tried to enter. When they turned back to New York, they were thrown into separate police cars, questioned, photographed and fingerprinted, with the mother forced to remove her hijab. (They were thankfully able to eventually get temporary resident permits and have since become permanent residents.)

While Canada has disingenuously argued that it has no control over what happens to those it deports or kicks back to the US, the Court found that “CBSA officials are involved in the physical handing over of claimants to US officials. This conduct does not make Canada a ‘passive participant’ and it provides a ‘sufficient connection’ to the offending conduct. I conclude that the actions of Canadian officials in returning ineligible STCA claimants to US officials facilitates a process that results in detention.”

 

Physical and Psychological Suffering

The Court notes that “the accounts of detainees demonstrate both physical and psychological suffering because of detention, and a real risk that they will not be able to assert asylum claims.” The conditions they are forced to ensure are brutal, with the court  finding “all describe the detention centres as abnormally cold. J.K. describes being unable to sleep due to the cold; P.Q. describes asking for extra blankets, but not receiving any until she had a fever and needed to see a doctor, and R.S. stated that when prisoners would huddle together for warmth, the guards would pull the blankets off them. J.K. states that she denied requiring medical attention to avoid being handcuffed. R.S. describes the medical care in her detention facility as being inadequate. R.S. observed the nurse in her detention facility ignore black detainees while going out of her way to address medical issues of white detainees. She states that the nurse would ‘ignore us and simply not address our concerns’.”

The Court’s bottom line was clear: “The evidence establishes that the conduct of Canadian officials in applying the provisions of the STCA will provoke certain, and known, reactions by US officials. In my view, the risk of detention for the sake of ‘administrative’ compliance with the provisions of the STCA cannot be justified. Canada cannot turn a blind eye to the consequences that befell Ms. Mustefa in its efforts to adhere to the STCA. The evidence clearly demonstrates that those returned to the US by Canadian officials are detained as a penalty.”

Such brutal conditions are wholly consistent with those documented in report after report, including Human Rights Watch’s In The Freezer: Abusive Conditions for Women and Children in US Immigration Holding Cells, as well as the excellent Netflix series Immigration Nation, which follows the plight of many of those detained, those organizing against the American concentration camps, and the casual cruelty of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers who, like their CBSA counterparts, think only in terms of numbers processing and bottom lines.

All of this is publicly available evidence, and yet Canada continues to behave as if the US is a safe destination for refugees. Canadian officials are aware of the fact that, for Salvadorans, being sent back to the US and eventual deportation back home often results in death. Indeed, more than 70 people deported from the US to that country under the Obama administration from 2012-15 were murdered upon their return, numbers that increased under Trump with deteriorating conditions in that Central American country.

While the Federal Court gave Ottawa a six-month period to bring its policies in line with the constitution and the law, the Trudeau Liberals have chosen in favour of the Trump concentration camp system of family separation and racist border walls, deciding last week to appeal the Court decision. In an August 21 statement, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair made himself eligible for the Cognitive Dissonance Award of 2020 by declaring the appeal was being conducted because “Canada remains firmly committed to upholding a compassionate, fair and orderly refugee protection system.”

Whether that commitment will extend to Roma refugee Celina Urbanowicz remains to be seen. She spent a few hours last week dropping off face masks to grateful nurses at Riverside Hospital in Ottawa. As she returned home to continue her one-woman production line, her daughters and supporters continue campaigning to have her accepted as a permanent resident to Canada and to cancel the deportation to Poland. This week, they launched a 23-day chain fast, each day marking one year that she and her family have lived here without status. They are also promoting a petition that has garnered over 7,000 signatures.  

The fact that refugees must risk their lives in a Covid-infected facility or seek the help of advocates to generate petitions, publicity, demonstrations, and chain fasts simply to win their basic right to be safe speaks not to a refugee problem, but to a systemic problem with Canada’s immigration system. As government officials continue to dismiss their legal obligations to asylum seekers, it falls to the rest of us to engage in this work to ensure an end to the cruel warehousing, hunting, and deportation of those who came here because their backs were against the wall in their home countries. Lives hang in the balance, and all of us have choices to make.

 

 

 

 

 

             

 

 

 

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Megadam Opponents Follow Up on One-Year-Old Ignored Request to Meet with NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh

 

 

August 26, 2020

 

 

Jagmeet Singh, MP

Leader of the NDP

Critic for Indigenous Relations and Services

Re: Following Up on One-Year-Old Request to Meet Over Muskrat Falls, Gull Island and other Megadams Affecting Indigenous Peoples

CC: Niki Ashton, Leah Gazan

 

Dear Mr. Singh,

 

We write during a month of painful anniversaries. August 7 marked the first anniversary of the beginning of the impoundment of the Muskrat Falls megadam’s reservoir in 2019. This $13.7 billion megadam never received the free, prior and informed consent of all Indigenous peoples affected, and now we are dealing with the fearful effects of this dangerous project.

 

The impoundment – undertaken without the necessary clearance of trees, brush, and vegetation – means only one thing: the methylmercury poisoning of an Indigenous country food web that has existed since time immemorial. This is the latest in a centuries’ old Canadian strategy of poisoning or eliminating by other violent means the Indigenous food supply. 

 

This month, we mark another painful anniversary. It has been one year since we wrote an open letter to you requesting a meeting and action from you and the NDP to stand up for the rights of those downstream of Muskrat Falls. In that year, despite our many calls, emails, and personal delivery of this request to NDP headquarters in Ottawa, neither you nor your staff have once responded.

 

This is totally inconsistent with your fine words about reconciliation and Indigenous rights. As a federal leader who appointed himself responsible for the party’s Indigenous rights portfolio, you have unfortunately failed to address this federal issue: indeed, $9.2 billion in federal money is  backing this project, whose development process completely flies in the face of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

 

This fact was recognized in June, 2019 by the United Nations, which called on  "the Federal Government to use its leverage as the largest investor in the [Muskrat Falls] project...to prevent the release of methylmercury,” while noting that the project had not received free, prior and informed consent of all affected Indigenous peoples.

 

Meanwhile, Muskrat Falls Inquiry Commissioner Richard LeBlanc wrote in the inquiry’s conclusions earlier this year that the dam’s proponents “did not act fairly with the Nunatsiavut Government, the NunatuKavut Community Council and the Innu of Ekuanitshit. GNL [Government of Newfoundland and Labrador] and Nalcor created an environment of mistrust and suspicion by not allowing all of the Indigenous Peoples and other concerned citizens to engage in a meaningful and transparent consultation process….Even today, GNL has failed to ensure that its commitments, and those of Nalcor, regarding environmental matters related to the Project are being properly tracked, monitored and acted upon.

 

While the Conservatives and Liberals have long said this is out of their hands and dismissed it is a provincial matter, the federal government is the single largest investor in this project and should have – and could still – use its leverage to limit the damage being done on a daily basis. That is why we are again writing to you as a federal leader who says he cares about Indigenous rights.

 

Our request to meet with you is not simply to discuss past grievances regarding Muskrat Falls. We also wish to speak with you because – even after the disastrous process that has led to Muskrat Falls – plans are now afoot to build a megadam almost three times as large upstream at Gull Island. The harmful impacts of yet another megadam are almost incalculable.

 

Those who tout megadams as green energy have bought into a false panacea to address climate change. From the production of methane to the destruction by flooding of traditional habitats to the contamination of Indigenous food webs, such projects are genocidal in their impact. Heat pollution from these dams as well as silica depletion, loss of sediment and nutrients, and a massive negative effect on fisheries are just a few of the detrimental effects on the marine environment of the St. Lawrence River, the Gulf of Maine and the George’s Banks. We see this same pattern across the land, from Muskrat Falls to the many destructive dams built by Manitoba Hydro to Site C in the Peace River region.  The time for a national reckoning for how these dams have devastated Indigenous nations is long past; the time for discussion with you on how we can stop these disasters in the making (while also addressing the ongoing damage of completed projects) is now.

 

While profoundly disappointed in the refusal of you and your party to even consider communicating in response to our many requests, we still hope that as you continue in your position, you will have a change of heart and discuss this critical issue with us. We have much information to share with you.

 

Please feel free to contact the Ontario Muskrat Solidarity Coalition (tasc@web.ca, 613-300-9536) and Grand Riverkeeper Labrador Inc. (rebnfl@gmail.com) so that we may work with you to end the suffering caused both by current megadams and those still planned.

 

Marjorie Flowers, Happy Valley Goose Bay, Labrador

Roberta Frampton Benefiel, Happy Valley Goose Bay, Labrador

Denise Cole, Happy Valley Goose Bay, Labrador

Erin Saunders, Happy Valley Goose Bay, Labrador

Beatrice Hunter, Happy Valley Goose Bay, Labrador

Bryanna Brown, Happy Valley Goose Bay, Labrador

Rita Monias, Pimicikamak Okimawin

Matthew Behrens, Unceded, Unsurrendered Algonquin Territory (aka Ottawa)

 

 

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Handwrite for Harkat's Human Rights: Send a Free Snail Mail Letter to Stop His Deportation to Torture

 

Details on how to participate in this FREE snail mail campaign below!
 
WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?
In an age of easily ignored electronic mail, Members of Parliament rarely receive physical mail. When they do, it’s a sign that someone cares enough to sit down and write something out and mail it. During the pandemic, many people have turned to traditional home-based activities like sourdough bread baking and arts and crafts. So why not a handwritten letter to protect someone's human rights? It’s a perfect summertime activity while sitting outside at the socially distanced beach, under a shady tree in the park, or at your kitchen table.

We hope to generate 5,000 personal letters to stop one of the gravest crimes a government can commit: sending someone to torture. Below is a sample letter to MP and Public Safety Minister Bill Blair (feel free to personalize it and explain why this issue is important to you) to stop the deportation to torture of Ottawa refugee Mohamed Harkat, who has lived with this “wrongful conviction” nightmare (even though he was never charged)  for 18 years. Imagine the pain of indefinitely facing a potential death sentence based on allegations from secret accusers you were never allowed to face and cross examine.  Learn more about his case here: https://www.change.org/p/help-stop-my-husband-s-deportation-to-torture

HOW THIS WORKS
1. Get a pen and paper and an envelope.
2. Write a letter (sample below, feel free to personalize it). If handwriting is a problem, you can type a letter and print it out with your signature (if typing, maybe handwrite an additional sentence as well as a PS, like “Canada should never deport anyone to torture. This must end!"
3. Put your return address in the upper left hand corner of the envelope. No postage required! Don't put any slogans or messages on the envelope—we want each one opened!
4. Send the letter for FREE to the following address
Bill Blair, MP
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario. K1A 0A6

5. Email tasc@web.ca to let us know you sent a letter so we can keep track of our numbers.
6. If you have a scanner, scan your handwritten letter and send it to tasc@web.ca ; if you are comfortable taking a selfie and holding up your letter and sending it to us, we would love to post it on social media 
7. Share this callout with friends, family and on social media: https://www.facebook.com/events/4813748268651004

Thanks so much!

Matthew Behrens
Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture

SAMPLE LETTER


(Feel free to personalize or edit: why is this issue important to you?)

Dear Bill Blair,

Please grant permanent residency to Ottawa refugee Mohamed (Moe) Harkat and end the threat of deportation to torture. A well-supported application to allow Mr. Harkat to stay in Canada has been on your desk for over four years.

Starting in 2002, Moe spent 43 months in maximum security detention without charge on secret allegations he was not allowed to properly contest. He was released in 2006 on the strictest bail conditions in Canadian history, and while they have lessened, they are still incredibly intrusive and humiliating 14 years later.  The original “evidence” against Mr. Harkat was destroyed by CSIS, and the allegations against him are based on two secret informants – one failed a lie detector test and the other had an affair with his CSIS handler – who were never cross-examined in court. 

If this had been a regular criminal trial, the term “wrongful conviction” would fit perfectly.

This is grossly unfair. Moe is a United Nations Convention refugee who has lived in Canada for 25 years. If deported, he faces the risk of imprisonment, torture, and possibly death in Algeria. Courts in the UK and Ireland have barred their governments from deporting people to Algeria who face a substantial risk of torture. Canada must do the same in Moe’s case.

On October 26, 2017, Prime Minister Trudeau clearly stated: “Nobody ever deserves to be tortured. And when a Canadian government is either complicit in that or was not active enough in preventing it, there needs to be responsibility taken.”

The threat to deport Moe violates Canadian law and the UN Convention Against Torture (which outlaws deportation to torture under any circumstances, without exception).

Under the law, you have the power to allow Mr. Harkat to stay in Canada. I, along with thousands of other people both in Canada and globally, urge you to use this power today to allow Mohamed Harkat to remain in Canada and live his life, safe from fear and torture, with his wife and community.

I look forward to hearing from you about the resolution of this case.

Thank you  
 
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