On March 26, Bill C-12 received royal assent and became law. The bill brought major changes to Canada’s immigration and asylum systems.
According to the Thunder Bay Newcomer Legal Clinic, these changes carry serious risks to immigrants. Specifically, any immigrant who arrived in Canada after June 24, 2020 and lived the country for a year or more will no longer be able to claim refugee status.
“Because of this bill, a number of our clients have been put in a very difficult situation where maybe they came to Canada three or four years ago, and now something has changed in their home country,” said Robert St. Aubin, a Thunder Bay Newcomer Legal Clinic refugee and immigration lawyer.
“We have clients who face real, real, risk if they go home, and the refugee process is something that is completely not open to them.”
A refugee claim is a formal request for protection made by individuals who cannot return to their home country due to a well-founded fear of persecution or serious harm. These fears could be due to factors such as race, religion, nationality, sexuality, or political activism.
Wars, coups, or regime changes can drastically alter living conditions in a person’s home country, and St. Aubin says that at‑risk immigrants who have lived in Canada for more than a year should be allowed to claim refugee status to avoid being sent back to an increasingly dangerous political environment.
St. Aubin also shared a hypothetical example of an LGBTQ+ Lakehead student who came to Thunder Bay from a country that criminalizes homosexuality. After completing their studies, word travels back to their home country that they have found a partner of the same sex and they face persecution. Because they have lived in Canada for over a year after June 2020, they now cannot claim refugee status and face significant risk of being sent back against their will.
“The fact that this person would be barred from making a refugee claim because they’ve been in Canada for more than one year is, I think, a little silly.” he said.
These individuals can apply for a Pre-Removal Risk Assessment (PRRA) as a last‑resort attempt to avoid deportation, but approval rates are low and the process is only available once removal from Canada is imminent.
“A Pre-Removal Risk Assessment is sort of like a refugee claim done exclusively on paper, where essentially you’re allowed to make one last claim for protection,” St. Aubin said. “If you have only access to a PRRA, not only are the timelines really tight for that, you have less time to prepare the type of application, and it’s done exclusively on paper and there’s usually no obligation for an immigration officer to flag any concerns to you. So they usually have a much higher refusal rate than a refugee claim.”
The primary goal for St. Aubin and most newcomer advocates across Canada is to repeal this law and allow at-risk migrants to apply for refugee status even when they have been in Canada longer than a year. A short-term fix that St. Aubin presents are “carve-outs” (exceptions) for particularly dangerous situations.
“We would prefer to see the bill change or get removed entirely, but if that’s not going to happen, carve-outs for certain groups and countries would be preferable to what we have right now, which is just a blanket ban on everybody,” St. Aubin said.
“You can make a nonsense claim about fearing persecution from a place like Spain, and maybe that’s made-up because you just want to stay in Canada. But if you’re a woman from Afghanistan, you’re going to face persecution if you go back to Afghanistan, right? Both of these people are treated exactly the same.”
St. Aubin says he’s heard rumors that lobbyists will succeed in granting these exceptions to Bill C-12, but nothing has been passed yet.
“I’m not involved with that, and I don’t know what’s going to happen with that, but I would be very surprised if that litigation isn’t filed soon.”
