What To Do If People Come To Canada On A Boat And Ask To Be Admitted As Refugees

1. Don’t panic!

Take a deep breath.

2. Remember that there is a process in place to deal with this issue.  

According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada:

The Canadian refugee system has two main parts:

- the Refugee and Humanitarian Resettlement Program, for people seeking protection from outside Canada; and
- the In-Canada Asylum Program for people making refugee protection claims from within Canada.

If you can see the boat full of people from your house, that means they will likely be processed under the In-Canada Asylum Program. To calm your fears, Citizenship and Immigration Canada further explains that:

Refugees come from around the world and many make their claims in Canada....The asylum program works to provide refugee protection to people in Canada who are at risk of torture, or cruel or unusual punishment in their home countries.

Not everyone is eligible to seek asylum. For example, people convicted of serious criminal offences and people who have had previous refugee claims denied by Canada are not accepted.

3. Don't kill asylum seekers.

Even if you are still alarmed after reading about Canada's refugee process, don't kill these strange newcomers, regardless of what the Toronto Sun helpfully suggests.  Killing asylum seekers is a violation of their rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

If you look carefully at your copy of the Charter, you'll notice that some rights are only for Canadian citizens (like the right to vote, article 3) and some rights are for "everyone" (like the right to life, liberty and security of the person, article 7).

Do asylum seekers and refugee claimants who arrive in Canada on a leaky boat count as "everyone" under Canadian law? The Supreme Court of Canada answered this very question in their April 4, 1985 decision in Singh v. Minister of Employment and Immigration. According to the Supreme Court, foreign nationals in Canada have Charter rights, so killing them would be illegal.

4. Don't send them directly back home.

Canada has signed the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment. 

Article 33 of the 1951 convention contains a non-refoulement clause that restricts the ability of signatory states to expel or forcibly return asylum seekers. According to the convention:

(1) No Contracting State shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. 

(2) The benefit of the present provision may not, however, be claimed by a refugee whom there are reasonable grounds for regarding as a danger to the security of the country in which he is, or who, having been convicted by a final judgment of a particularly serious crime, constitutes a danger to the community of that country.

Similarly, Article 3 of the 1984 convention against torture says that:

(1) No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

(2) For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

And finally, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 14, says:

(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

5. If you have no verifiable information, stop pretending that you do.

"Tamil Migrants Sick With TB!"

- Toronto Star, Wednesday August 11, 2010.
"Tamil Migrants in Good Shape!"

- CBC, Saturday, August 14, 2010.

(from the 2009 boat of Tamil asylum seekers, the Ocean Lady):

"Officials allege Tamil migrant ship smuggling explosives!"  

- National Post, November 1, 2009.
"One-third of 'refugees' on B.C. ship were Tamil Tigers: report!" 

- National Post, June 20, 2010.

"Terrorism allegations against Tamils dropped: No proof, Border Services Agency admits" 

- Times Colonist, July 10, 2010.

(back to the current boat):

"RCMP, CBSA expected to board ship that may be carrying Tamil Tigers this week!" 

- Winnipeg Free Press, July 10, 2010.

6. Consider the possibility that words have meaning. 

Not all Sri Lankan Tamils are part of the Tamil Tigers. Just ask this Canadian law professor from Queen's who says so!  And seeking asylum is a right, not a crime. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to refer to these asylum seekers as "illegals". Come to think of it, "queue jumper" is also an odd way to describe them, seeing as "It is inherent to the refugee experience that one does not wait in a line, fearing serious harm or death, to make the difficult decision to flee."

7. Now sit down and calmly consider what the real issues are here.