NDP, Greens call for end to Safe Third Country Agreement after migrants die crossing St. Lawrence River

Both the federal New Democrats and the Greens are calling on the federal government to immediately scrap the now-expanded 2004 Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) with the United States following the tragic deaths earlier this month of two families who drowned in the St. Lawrence River attempting to cross from Canada into the United States on the Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) territory of Akwesasne, which straddles the Ontario, Quebec, and New York borders. “The Liberal government has effectively taken a page out of Trump’s playbook by erecting an invisible wall,” said NDP MP Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, B.C.), her party's critic for immigration, refugees and citizenship, who referred to Trump’s infamous 2016 Republican presidential campaign pledge to build a wall along the United States border with Mexico, the construction of which began under his watch, but which was terminated by his Democratic successor, President Joe Biden. “The NDP continues to call for the government to suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement,” said Kwan. “It should allow asylum seekers to come to official border entry points and make their refugee claims through that pathway.” Ending the STCA would not have a negative impact on Canada’s relationship with the U.S., according to Green Party Leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.), who said that STCA “should simply be scrapped. People’s lives are at risk.” “The Safe Third Country Agreement runs contrary to international refugee law and our obligations towards refugees, and is just offensive to basic principles of the rights of refugees,” said May. “We’ve always understood, up until the time that we agreed to the Safe Third Country Agreement, that people claiming refugee status on arrival in Canada immediately triggers rights.” During Biden’s visit to Ottawa last month, his administration and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s (Papineau, Que.) government announced that the U.S. had agreed to extend the STCA to apply along the 8,900 kilometres of the shared border. As a result, asylum seekers will be turned back at such irregular border crossings as Roxham Road in Quebec, while Canada will welcome an additional 15,000 migrants on a humanitarian basis from the Western Hemisphere over the course of the year to continue “expanding safe, regular pathways offered throughout the hemisphere as an alternative to irregular migration, with a path to economic opportunities,” according to a news release from the prime minister’s office. However, as Kwan highlighted, the “Canadian government secretly negotiated the expansion of the Safe Third Country Agreement without consultation with stakeholders in the middle of a court challenge on the constitutionality” of the STCA. “This, to me, is absolutely astounding that the government would do that,” said Kwan. Following Biden’s first presidential visit to Canada, CBC reported that last year, Canadian and American bureaucrats completed talks on expanding the STCA “in response to years of Canadian demands.” “The new deal was signed in Ottawa by Immigration Minister Sean Fraser on March 29, 2022, and in Washington on April 15 by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas," according to CBC. Last October, the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR), Amnesty International Canada, and the Canadian Council of Churches appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada in a case called Canadian Council for Refugees, et al. v. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, et al. calling for an end to the STCA “that cruelly bars many people from seeking refugee protection in Canada,” according to a CCR release. The three human rights groups argued that “the practice of barring refugee claimants from seeking protection violates Canada’s human rights obligations under both the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international law.” They twice won their constitutional challenge before the Federal Court. In 2007, the court found that the safe third-country rule unjustifiably violated refugees’ Charter rights to life, liberty and security of the person, under Sec. 7, and to non-discrimination, under Sec. 15. In 2020, the Federal Court again found that the STCA violates Sec. 7. The federal government challenged both decisions, and each time won before the Federal Court of Appeal—the latter decision of which ended up in the Supreme Court, which has yet to release its ruling. Kwan said that by expanding the STCA across the entire Canada-U.S. land border (including internal waterways), “the government is pushing asylum seekers, who are trying to get to safety, further into a more dangerous path.” “The recent tragedies show how deadly those crossings could be,” Kwan said. “I fear that more people will die as they try to find a pathway to safety.” May echoed that opinion. “I totally agree with Jenny Kwan on this,” she said. “The reality of the situation is that refugee claimants will take even more dangerous means to get into Canada, and choose riskier ways to cross the border.” “Roxham Road, while not a proper point of entry, was one that allowed for fairly safe access for claimants and for their claims to be dealt with in an orderly fashion,” said May about that irregular border crossing, where, as Kwan said in a March 25 news release, nearly 40,000 migrants entered Canada last year. Late last month, four members of a family from India and four members of a family from Romania died after a boat they were in capsized. Akwesasne Mohawk Police said last week they were investigating whether the eight people’s attempt to cross the border was facilitated by one or more individuals. An Akwesasne man, Casey Oakes, whose boat was found upended near the area where the bodies were recovered on March 30 and 31, has not been seen since and is a person of interest in the case. Beyond the horror surrounding the loss of life was the direction in which the families were headed. May noted that people normally crossing into Canada are those facing deportation in the U.S.—not the other way around. Florin and Cristina Lordache arrived in Canada in 2017, seeking asylum on the basis that they faced discrimination in Romania as Roma. According to media reports, their asylum claim was rejected last year and they faced removal from Canada on March 29. The couple—both aged 28—along with their two-year-old daughter, Evelin, and one-year-old son, Elyen, were among the eight who drowned at Akwesasne. Following the discovery of the bodies, Trudeau told reporters at an April 3 news conference on this year’s federal budget in Val-d’Or, Que., that Canada will welcome more immigrants, “but we’re going to make sure that it’s done in the right ways.” At a news conference that same day, which was also on the budget, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Sean Fraser (Central Nova, N.S.) said: "We want to do what we can to promote opportunities for people to come through regular pathways so they know that they’re going to be able to arrive in Canada safely, whether that’s through our refugee programs, whether that’s through our economic programs to be reunited with their families," he said, “instead of incentivizing people to take these extremely dangerous journeys.” The Hill Times was unsuccessful in its request for further comment from the immigration and refugees minister on the migrant issue. Kwan said that the best way to “ensure that there are orderly pathways to safety for asylum seekers is to suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement.” The “vast majority of the irregular asylum seekers are found to have a valid claim by the Immigration Refugee Board,” she said in a March 27 letter to Fraser. “Furthermore, Canada's international obligations on refugees include a commitment to ‘non-refoulement.’ That’s a commitment to not send refugees back to countries where they could be subjected to persecution. Under this scheme, if a refugee turned away by Canada is later deported to a country where they face persecution, Canada could be considered complicit in this human rights violation,” Kwan stated. Kwan proceeded to highlight the case of Seidu Mohammed, a bisexual man from Ghana who was found, along with another Ghanaian man, walking down a highway on a bitterly cold Christmas Eve morning in 2016 after entering Canada at an irregular border crossing near Emerson, Man. Both men lost their fingers to frostbite. Kwan said that Mohammed told her that “his pants were literally frozen in the ground because the snow was waist-deep.” The man, now 30, received his Canadian citizenship certificate last month. Had the expanded STCA “been in place in 2016, Mr. Mohammed would have been deported back to Ghana and be subjected to violence and discrimination for his sexual orientation as Ghana law prohibits same-sex sexual activity (‘unnatural carnal knowledge’) under their criminal code,” Kwan wrote in her letter to the immigration minister. Kwan and her NDP colleague Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) held an April 3 news conference at the Emerson-area irregular crossing, with Mohammed, calling for an end to the STCA. Green Party Leader May, who practised refugee law in Halifax in the 1980s before entering politics, said that refugee claimants entering Canada often have no access to legal aid and face “a long road, and it’s very difficult road.” “If they have the wrong answer to a question when they first get to the border, that sticks with their file forever,” she said. “It’s not a case that you can say that the United States is always a safe third country, based on people escaping for gender persecution and for many kinds of legitimate fears. “If you’re desperate enough to come to Canada and risk your life, the chances are you’re escaping something that is life-threatening.” As the Green leader added: “As a country, we need to be more welcoming, and we need to recognize that accepting refugees at our borders and providing them with Charter rights often yield wonderful Canadian citizens.” “But quite often, the case is not made and refugee claimants are returned to their country of origin.” The Hill Times

NDP, Greens call for end to Safe Third Country Agreement after migrants die crossing St. Lawrence River

The STCA runs contrary to international refugee law and Canada's obligations towards refugees, and is just offensive to basic principles of the rights of refugees, says Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.

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