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• DETENTION
• REMOVALS

SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS

DETENTION

Guidelines on Detention

1. Citizenship and Immigration Canada should make the implementation of new guidelines on detention for immigration officers a high priority in order to foster consistency across the country.

2. Detention should be imposed only if the guidelines have been carefully followed, and only as a last resort after the possibility of conditional release has been carefully considered and rejected.

3. New guidelines on detention should be accompanied by expanded training for all individuals who will be applying them.

Long-Term Detention

4. People who are detained and who are not a danger to the public should be released after a specified period of detention if, through no fault of their own, their removal is not imminent. The Immigration and Refugee Board guidelines should be redrafted to reflect this policy, which should also be considered for inclusion in the revised Immigration Act.

Detention to Ascertain Identity

5. Citizenship and Immigration Canada should detain in cases where the identity of a person is not established.

6. Citizenship and Immigration Canada should investigate the feasibility of instituting, in cooperation with airline carriers, a system to scan the travel documents of people coming to Canada on flights that have presented control problems.

Conditions in Detention Centres

7. Conditions in immigration detention facilities should be uniform. If it is impossible to upgrade the Mississauga detention facility, a new facility should be sought.

8. Citizenship and Immigration Canada should build on its existing partnerships with non-governmental organizations in seeking ways to enable those organizations to expand their work in immigration detention centres.

9. Young people who have lived for longer than seven days in an immigration detention centre should have access to educational and language training programs paid for by the federal government.

10. The brief written material given to all new detainees at immigration detention centres should be followed up with verbal communication in their own language to ensure that they understand their legal situation and the rules of the institution. Non-governmental organizations should be encouraged to assist in this process.

11. The government should ensure that refugee claimants about whom there is no suggestion of criminality are not detained with criminals.

12. Detention reviews and other immigration hearings should be conducted at immigration detention facilities, thus avoiding the need to transport handcuffed detainees to other locations for those proceedings.

Provisional Status

13. Citizenship and Immigration Canada should not accept the proposals of Not Just Numbers that include the establishment of provisional status and mandatory detention consequent on loss of that status.

Dentention Review

14. The detention review function should continue to be performed by individuals who are institutionally independent from Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

REMOVALS

Information Technology

15. With respect to removals and case management, Citizenship and Immigration Canada should make the development of modern information technology tools capable of supporting the enforcement function its highest priority.

Cooperation of Foreign Governments

16. In order to apply pressure to those countries that do not cooperate in taking back their nationals, the government should apply more pressure by making linkages between cooperation in that area and such matters as the issuance of visas, worker programs, and foreign aid.

17. The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration should table each year a report to Parliament naming the countries that are unwilling to cooperate in the removal from Canada of their nationals, including a list of the number of individuals involved.

Interdiction Abroad

18. Recognizing that the interdiction abroad of people who are inadmissible to Canada is the most efficient manner of reducing the need for costly, lengthy removal processes, Citizenship and Immigration Canada should apply additional resources available to expand our overseas interdiction programs.

19. The Canadian government should urge other countries to create a criminal offence of organizing, or conspiring to organize, the illegal entry of individuals into another country.

20. The Canadian government should work in concert with other countries that also must deal with the consequences of illegal immigration in order to apply international pressure on the primary countries in which illegal immigration originates.

Risk Review

21. Jurisdiction to assess the risk to an individual of removal should be transferred to the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Humanitarian and Compassionate Reviews

22. Citizenship and Immigration Canada should swiftly respond to the criticisms of the humanitarian and compassionate process made by the Auditor General.

23. Citizenship and Immigration Canada should consider consolidating humanitarian and compassionate reviews, along with risk reviews, at the Immigration and Refugee Board.

24. Performance standards should be established for responding to such humanitarian and compassionate applications. Ninety days should be the maximum period, with shorter periods the norm in urgent cases.

25. The criteria for humanitarian and compassionate consideration should be broadened to give more emphasis to the interests of children.

Removal of Long-term Residents of Canada

26. Citizenship and Immigration Canada should give serious consideration to including in the proposed revisions to the Immigration Act protection in law from deportation to permanent residents who have been in the country for a long period of time, particularly if they came to Canada as children.

The Advisory Committee on Country Conditions

27. Citizenship and Immigration Canada should consult with experienced non-governmental organizations on the adequacy of the existing criteria that guide the Advisory Committee on Country Conditions.

International Law

28. Citizenship and Immigration Canada should exercise great caution in deporting an individual in the face of a formal request not to do so from an international body charged with applying an international human rights treaty. Deportation should occur in these situations only for the most compelling reasons.

29. When Citizenship and Immigration Canada drafts new immigration legislation, it should do so with a view to aligning the new law to the greatest extent possible with international human rights law, in particular the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child, which Canada signed in 1991.

Marine Transportation

30. Citizenship and Immigration Canada should examine the sections of the Act applicable to marine transportation with a view to devising rules that are clear, fair to the industry, and that further the efficient enforcement of the Immigration Act.

Code of Ethics

31. Citizenship and Immigration Canada should develop a Code of Ethics or Conduct specifically relevant to the enforcement function, to be included as part of the general Code of Conduct or as a separate document.

Oversight Body

32. Citizenship and Immigration Canada should establish an independent oversight body with a clear mandate to deal with complaints regarding the immigration enforcement system. The body would receive complaints about treatment or violations of the Code of Conduct that remained unresolved after the appropriate internal channels had been exhausted.