Photo credit: Toronto Star
A former Canadian immigration minister, Lloyd Axworthy, a prominent champion for refugees, has said he believes the country is putting its reputation as a welcoming place for refugees at risk through recent federal policy shifts.
CTV News reports that, according to him, those shifts include the Carney government’s new border security bill, C-12, which would limit the ability of individuals who have been in Canada for more than a year to claim asylum.
It would also give the government new authority to cancel or suspend some immigration documents, including permanent resident visas and immigration applications, in what the legislation calls the “public interest.”
Axworthy said, “We’re generally regressing into a kind of bubble. And unfortunately, it’s been pressured by a lot of right-wing politics against immigration. We have a basic human rights commitment, and I think we’ve lost that human rights commitment in terms of what we’re doing.”
He announced his retirement from the chair of the World Refugee and Migration Council. He said, while Canada likes to talk about being a welcoming place for newcomers in friendly venues like the United Nations, Ottawa needs to offer more than lip service to the plight of refugees.
Axworthy said it “disturbs” him that Canada is “maybe not so slowly” backtracking on promises it made under the UN Refugee Convention. Among other things, Canada committed to not returning refugees to countries where they may face serious threats to their lives or freedom.
To stand by that principle, Axworthy said, Canada needs to terminate the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States.
Under that agreement, people must claim asylum in whichever country they get to first, meaning they can’t leave the US to seek refugee status in Canada. It assumes that both the US and Canada are “safe countries” for refugees.
“The United States no longer has the values we do,” Axworthy said, “We always assume that we would have a similar kind of view of the basic rights of people. Well, with (US President Donald) Trump and company, we’ve seen mass deportations and no appeals and their refugee programs are reduced.”
Axworth cited a Sept 10 memo Trump issued saying the US would only accept 7,500 refugees – down from the previous cap of 125,000 under President Joe Biden – and would prioritize white South Africans claiming racial discrimination.
Trump has repeatedly cited widely discredited claims of “white genocide” and persecution of South African farmers and announced he would boycott the G20 summit in South Africa later this month in response.
Meanwhile, the South African government has said the claims of racial persecution are baseless.
