A promised land | The Press

Our reception system, which is a model, has always enjoyed good support from the population, including in Quebec. But the world has changed. Population movements are exploding all over the planet. Is the Canadian system well equipped to deal with these pressures?

How does Canada compare?

The acceptance rate of asylum applications in Canada is very high compared to other countries: 78% of cases that were the subject of a decision obtained a favorable response in 2023.

Consult statistics from the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada

Everywhere else, within the G7 or in the countries of the European Union, the levels are much lower.

For comparison purposes, The Press used standardized data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. According to them, in France, the acceptance rate stood at 27%.

In Germany, the country that accepts the most asylum seekers relative to its population, the rate was 41%.

Spain, also in great demand, only accepted 17%.

In Italy, one of the main gateways into Europe for migrants arriving from the Mediterranean, the acceptance rate is even lower, at 12%.

Several countries outside the European Union have higher acceptance rates, although without reaching Canadian rates: Australia, at 47%, the United Kingdom, at 65%, and the United States, at 73%. . The latter have a high rate, but this is explained by the fact that the number of cases treated each year is very low.

Criteria for persecution

In short, Canada is truly a champion of hospitality.

What can explain these differences?

Of course, comparisons are difficult, among other things because the origin of asylum seekers is not the same from one host country to another. Certain countries, for geographical or historical reasons, receive more requests, such as the United States. Canada, surrounded by three oceans, is less subject to these pressures.

In principle, countries base themselves on the criteria for persecution defined by the 1951 Geneva Convention: a person can obtain refugee status if they have a well-founded fear of being persecuted in their country, because of their race, their religion, nationality, membership in a particular group or political opinions.

The differences in acceptance rates show that each country interprets these criteria according to its own legal framework, values ​​or priorities.

“Our system is considered more impartial than that of other countries,” says Adèle Garnier, professor at Laval University and member of the Chair on Global Migration Dynamics.

In other words, Canada is at the top of the class. Canada – and this is also true for Quebec – has always been a country of immigration and has traditionally seen itself as a welcoming land. This is what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed on Twitter in 2017: “To those fleeing persecution, terror and war, know that Canada will welcome you…” A message that had left its mark.

The question is whether this way of seeing things has the same support from Canadians and Quebecers today, when asylum requests continue to increase.

“This phenomenon is quite new,” observes François Audet, director of the Canadian Observatory on Humanitarian Crises and Action at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM).

A list of “safe countries”

In addition to the acceptance rate, Canada stands out for particularly long processing times, and for an absence of mechanisms to exclude applications from countries where the risk of persecution is lower.

Asylum applications are processed on an individual basis by the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB). Commissioners take into account the situation in the applicant’s country of origin. But Canada abandoned the use of a list of “safe countries” in 2019, like in Europe. It is assumed that nationals of these countries generally do not need protection.

There also appear to be informal lists of countries of origin for which receiving countries consider applications to be less plausible. “In France, it depends on the nationality of the applicants,” explains Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, research director at the National Center for Scientific Research, specializing in international migration issues.

In Spain, a significant proportion of applications come from Latin American countries, notably Venezuela, Colombia and Honduras. However, the Spanish authorities consider that the situations in these countries do not automatically justify the granting of asylum. The acceptance rate for applications from Venezuela is only 22%, despite the crisis in this country, compared to 94% in Canada. For Colombia, it is 5%, compared to 85% here.

“Everyone knows it”

We can illustrate the effects of this absence of global policies towards certain countries with the case of Bangladesh, which was, in 2024, the second country of origin of asylum seekers in Canada.

In 2022, Canada received only 845 requests from this country. They increased sharply in 2023, to 4,400, and they exploded in 2024, with 14,430 in just 9 months.

It is true that this country has experienced a serious political and economic crisis. But does it make its citizens victims of persecution? Most countries believe no. On average, Europe gave a positive response to only 4% of Bangladeshi applicants, Germany 9%, France 5%, the United Kingdom 27%, the United States 22 %. And Canada? At 80%.

“It’s always been a bit like that. But it has become clear: we arrive here and we know that in the next three, four, five years, the government is not going to expel us. So there is no problem. We stay, regardless of status. We are here,” says Michael Barutciski.

Not all asylum seekers are granted refugee status. Some leave after being rejected, but others fade into the shadows, remaining in Canada without status, often forgotten by the system. There is no precise data on the number of undocumented immigrants in the country. Estimates generally vary between 100,000 and 500,000, although some sources put the figure as high as a million.