Despite Canadian provinces committing to ending their immigration detention agreements with the federal government, Ontario and Quebec appear to be backing away from the agreements at the federal government’s request.
The Ontario government announced that starting June 15, it would no longer detain immigrants in provincial prisons on behalf of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).
However, Radio-Canada reports that immigrants being held for administrative reasons are still being held in the province and may remain there for some time.
“Following a request from the Government of Canada, a 45-day extension to the Immigration Detainer Agreement has been granted,” a spokesperson for Ontario’s Ministry of the Solicitor General confirmed.
The extension expires July 31, 2024, but the CBSA has not confirmed the exact deadline and discussions with Ontario and Quebec are ongoing, according to a spokesperson.
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Quebec has also indicated that it will no longer imprison people for immigration purposes from June 30.
However, this appears to have changed following a recent meeting between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Quebec Premier François Legault.
The Canadian government has offered Quebec $750 million to help pay for services for asylum seekers, and migrant detention is part of the talks.
“At their meeting on June 10, the premier and the provincial premiers stated that they were ready to begin discussions on this issue,” Quebec’s Executive Consultant In response to an inquiry from Radio-Canada.
“The two governments are currently in discussions,” the council, which reports to the Quebec premier, added.
Neither the federal nor Quebec governments have provided a specific timeline for the contract extension, but the federal funding proposal states that “the Government of Canada has requested continued access to Quebec correctional facilities for an additional 18 months.”
“The weakest of the weak”
Pierre-Olivier Marcoux, an immigration lawyer at the Montreal Legal Aid Clinic, said he is very concerned about these new developments.
He described incarcerated immigrants as “the most vulnerable of the most vulnerable” and said they would “suffer” further if prisons continued to be used.
When the CBSA detains people for immigration purposes, it can choose to hold them in provincial prisons or at immigration detention centres in Toronto, Laval, Quebec, and Surrey, British Columbia.
“In provinces where this measure is still applicable, detention in provincial facilities is limited to the most difficult cases where there are serious concerns about danger to the public, other detainees or staff,” the CBSA said in an email to Radio-Canada.
Marcoux said many of these detainees suffer from mental health issues and become agitated while in custody.
He said one of his clients is currently being held at Montreal’s Rivière-des-Prairies prison because he has been deemed a flight risk, not because he poses a danger to the public.
Under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the CBSA can detain aliens and permanent residents for three main reasons: if their identity is not fully established, if they are deemed to be a danger to the public, or if they are deemed a flight risk, i.e. if the Border Control Agency determines that they will not appear for immigration proceedings, including deportation.
Between April 1, 2023 and March 31, 2024, the CBSA detained nearly 5,000 immigrants, 78% of whom were deemed to be flight risks. Of all immigrant detentions, 17% were sent to provincial prisons.
Marcoux said holding immigration detainees in prison goes against Canada’s human rights obligations.
“In a cell without a toilet.”
The conditions facing migrants in detention have also been condemned by members of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB), Canada’s largest independent administrative tribunal.
Among other things, the IRB is responsible for reviewing the CBSA’s reasons for detaining a person, but has no authority to control where detention takes place.
Transcripts of IRB hearings from 2022 and 2023 obtained by Radio-Canada frequently raised the issue of poor living conditions in relation to Maplehurst Correctional Institution, a maximum-security detention center in Milton, Ont., where people are often incarcerated for immigration purposes.
Below are examples of comments made by IRB members regarding immigration detainees who have been determined to be flight risks.
- “Mental illnesses are being held in solitary confinement for 23 and a half hours a day.” [for over two months] He had very little contact with humans. [interaction]He had to make it very clear how excited he was to see someone who was just checking in, because otherwise he had no one to talk to. This is extremely disturbing and I want to be clear… this is unacceptable.”
- “Frankly, the conditions you describe are awful. What concerns me most is that you have not had a shower in over a week since you were detained and you are in a cell with no toilet. These details are concerning.” (The toilets are described as broken, overflowing with used toilet paper from previous inmates and having a nauseating stench.)
- “Maplehurst is not a good place for people with serious mental illness. The conditions have been described as inhumane due to overcrowding, lack of resources and a lack of counselling and other rehabilitative programs. It is completely inappropriate.” (IRB commissioners also highlighted how difficult it was to speak directly to detainees whose detention review hearings have been repeatedly cancelled due to staffing shortages at Maplehurst. Commissioners blamed delays on the CBSA choosing to detain the men in “facilitys that cannot cope with the normal caseload of hearings.”)
The CBSA said it is increasingly using its own facilities “to house higher-risk individuals.”
The federal government has invested $325 million over five years to upgrade three immigration detention centers.
The Canadian government also plans to use federal prisons to detain immigrants, a plan that the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which visited Canada in May, said it was “concerned” about.
NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have called on the federal government to end all forms of administrative detention of migrants.
