Ultimately, the goal is to encourage Canada to respect its commitments and adjust its practices to the standards of international human rights law. In other words, Canada’s portrait in terms of arbitrary detention is far from rosy.
In Canada, it is extremely common for migrants to be detained for administrative reasons. They are deprived of their liberty, not after having been convicted of a crime or an offense, but due to the simple determination of an administrative reason established by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).
For the League of Rights and Freedoms, the detention of migrants for administrative reasons should be prohibited. If the practice is maintained, it must constitute an exceptional measure of very last resort, in accordance with what international law provides.
However, in Canada, the detention of migrants has everything default scenario. In 2023, a total of 5,248 migrant people were detained across the country.
The administrative reasons that allow their detention are numerous and cover a large number of situations in which migrants frequently find themselves upon their arrival in Canada.
Remember that these people arrive in Canada in search of human dignity and security that the socio-economic and political conditions of their country do not allow them.
Finding yourself detained in this way for strictly administrative reasons is a great violence in itself, a violence which takes several forms and which is necessarily aggravated by the conditions of detention inflicted on people, which have a serious impact on their physical and psychological health.
Migrants at Roxham Road before its closure. (Archives La Presse, Patrick Sanfaçon/Archives La Presse, Patrick Sanfaçon)
Migrants in detention are often subject to disciplinary practices specific to prison institutions, such as lack of access to telephones, frequent and prolonged solitary confinement for too long a period, prolonged and repeated confinements, without access outside, in the showers, without significant human contact. Restraint measures are also used; a migrant detained for administrative reasons claims to have been taken to hospital for treatment, chained at the hands, feet and waist, a very humiliating situation.
Another practice of great concern is the detention of children and the separation of families. The CBSA uses a euphemism to talk about children accompanying their detained parent: children are considered to be “housed” in detention centers. These “hosted” children, 30 in the country in 2023, suffer the same prison conditions as their parents, violating several of their rights, notably to freedom, education and development.
The detention of migrants for administrative reasons leads to the separation of many families, going against the rights of the child and their best interests. Action Réfugiés Montréal counted in 2019, for Quebec alone, “more than 182 children separated from a detained parent, including seven babies born while their fathers were detained and 124 children separated from one of their parents after the family crossed the border in order to apply for asylum.
Asking for asylum is a right
The LDL’s brief submitted to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention brings to its attention several other issues. It highlights the brutality and irrationality of the detention of migrants for administrative reasons, and denounces the worrying opacity that surrounds it, which is far from being favorable to respect for human rights.
Requesting asylum is a right. Crossing a border irregularly is not a crime. It is time for Canada to stop treating migrants as a threat, both in public discourse and in its policies.
The government must instead remember its obligations to respect and protect the human rights they have, regardless of their migration status. Ending their detention on administrative grounds is necessary and urgent.
Signatories:
Laurence Guénette, spokesperson for the League of Rights and Freedoms
Camille Marquis-Bissonnette, member of the working committee on migrant rights of the League of Rights and Freedoms
Additional signatories:
Aurélie Lanctôt, Laurence Lallier-Rousseau and François Crépeau, members of the working committee on migrant rights of the League of Rights and Freedoms
