‘Hugely significant': King Charles reinforces his position as Canada's head of state
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CTV royal commentator Afua Hagan says King Charles' visit to Canada House reinforces to the world his position as Canada's head of state.
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CBC
17 minutes ago
- CBC
Experts warn of Bill C-2 as "anti-refugee" and "anti-immigrant" giving Canada "unchecked powers" like the U.S.
Mbonisi Zikhali came to Canada in 2009 from Zimbabwe to pursue a master's in journalism at Carleton University. Post-graduation, the international student found himself homeless in Windsor and applied for refugee status – a privilege soon unavailable if Bill C-2 becomes the law. "The bill is unnecessary and not sympathetic at all to people's well-being," Zikhali said. Many experts and community groups working with newcomers in Canada agree. They are calling on the Liberal government's sweeping new legislation, Bill C-2 or the Strong Borders Act, "anti-immigrant and anti-refugee" hoping the legislation is not voted on to become law. Zikhali said he came on scholarship and in 2012 found himself in Windsor picking tomatoes at a greenhouse. Soon enough, he was living on the streets, and lost his passport which also had his study permit in it. Applying for refugee status, Zikhali said, was his saving grace and worries this bill will deprive vulnerable people of a safe haven. What is Bill C-2? The legislation proposes changes to a number of laws including the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Specifically it allows officials to cancel, suspend or change immigration documents immediately, pause the acceptance of new applications and cancel applications already in process if deemed in the public interest. Critics say new border legislation aligns Canada's immigration system with the U.S. 20 hours ago Duration 2:43 Asylum claims would also have to be made within a year of entering the country, including for international students and temporary residents. For example, an Afghan international student came to study here in July 2020 .The Taliban takes over in August 2021 and things become scary back home. That student could have applied for asylum. But with this bill, the one-year time period would have lapsed and they would be ineligible. Zikhali said had the bill been around when he was applying for asylum, it would have been "devastating" as he would have been denied. The immigration changes would also require irregular border crossers, people who enter Canada between official ports of entry, to make an asylum claim within 14 days of arriving in Canada. "Very U.S.-like" bill: refugee help centre Windsor's Matthew House gives refugees a place to live and helps them with resettlement. Mike Morency, their executive director, worries this bill will put more vulnerable people at greater harm. "It continues to align our immigration system with that of the United States," Morency said. "Refugee claimants are not the problem. The one year-ban is a major concern for us. The other major concern for us is the ability of the government to declare an emergency and suspend applications. That one to me feels very US-like." Morency said he understands the government's will to try to cut back on international students and migrant workers making a refugee claim as a way to stay in Canada, but worries for people who have a legitimate need for protection being unfairly targeted. "It also feels very much like a workaround to our commitment to the Geneva Convention. If the government wants to step out of the Geneva Convention, then then we need to do it with integrity and we need to approach the UN and say we're going to withdraw," he said. Syed Hussan, spokesperson for the Migrant Rights Network, agrees saying the bill violates Canada's "most basic legal obligations" and is "immoral". Hussan asserts the bill infringes upon Canada's legal commitments and ethical standards by granting the government excessive authority to cancel permits. "Every refugee gets to have the right to have their case heard. That's now being taken away," he said. "Collectively it's a bill that gives the government unchecked power to take away people's status… This is an anti-immigrant and anti-refugee bill. It's illegal." Without any ability for people to appeal or have their case individually heard, Hussan said, the bill allows the government to "make people undocumented or just throw people out of the country in the hundreds of thousands". The changes also allow the federal immigration department to share information more widely with different agencies within Canada. Hussan said anyone who was not a citizen or later became a citizen will have their data impacted by the bill. Hassan said this is similar to the US immigration policies. "This is Carney's first test and he's failed it. He's no different from Donald Trump." Sharry Aiken, professor of law at Queen's University, also finds the bill troubling. "Very disappointing. It's a betrayal of many Canadians that supported this government in the most recent election," she said, noting these issues weren't part of the Liberal election campaign. The omnibus bill, she said, is quite complicated with 16 different parts and neither serves to reform the asylum system nor address Canadians' privacy rights. Typically, omnibus bills don't get the degree of parliamentary scrutiny and oversight, she said, which is concerning. Aiken said the one year-bar for asylum claimants represents "a major rollback of rights". "No longer are these claimants eligible for a hearing before the Refugee Protection Division," she said. The division of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) hears and decides claims for refugee protection in Canada. Aikens said this "arbitrary" bill will also very quickly develop a backlog. "The bill proposes a legislative fix for a problem that doesn't require new law. It requires operational intervention," she said. "This one year rule mimics what's in place in the U.S. and what has been the subject of extensive international criticism… This bill does a disservice to refugees and betrays the Canadian public's trust in the Liberal government for ensuring a fair refugee determination system consistent with international standards." She urges the MPs to separate out the provisions having the issues desegregated. 'Will make the process more cumbersome': immigration lawyer Toronto-based immigration lawyer, Mario Bellissimo, said with the bill creating "arbitrary distinctions" of 14 days and one year after June 2020, "an individualized assessment" approach is being taken away. While the number of refugee claimants have recently dipped, Bellissimo said the bill signals that Canada wants to potentially limit immigration. "It wants to send messages to individuals who want to traverse the system over many years without legitimate claims that this is not a destination of choice for you," he said. Bellissimo agrees that targeting individuals who impact the immigration system in a negative way is important but the bill will end up targeting individuals in genuine need of assistance.
Globe and Mail
21 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
Alarming privacy threats are buried in the Liberal border bill
Michael Geist holds the Canada Research Chair in internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa's faculty of law. A border security bill tabled by the Liberal government this week will have wide reach far beyond the 49th parallel. Buried in the massive bill are provisions to allow law enforcement to access information about internet subscribers without a warrant. While there may be a case for new police powers in the digital era, these should be presented in their own bill and be debated on their own merits. The pressure from Canadian law enforcement for access to internet subscriber data dates back to 1999, when government officials began crafting proposals that included legal powers to access surveillance and subscriber information. What followed were a series of lawful access bills that sparked opposition, both from the public and in the courts. For example, in 2012, then-public safety minister Vic Toews infamously said to Francis Scarpaleggia, now the Speaker of the House but then a critic of an internet surveillance bill, that he could 'stand with us or with the child pornographers.' The comment did not help his case, and the overwhelming negative publicity pressured the government to quickly backtrack by placing the lawful access bill on hold. Border security bill would give law enforcement access to internet subscriber information without a warrant Liberal government's Throne Speech passes as Carney survives first major test of confidence The lawful access campaign was effectively derailed for a decade by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2014, when it ruled that there was a reasonable expectation of privacy in internet subscriber information. It doubled down on that ruling last year, expanding the privacy safeguards by adding that IP addresses were similarly protected. The Strong Borders Act seeks to circumvent these decisions by creating a new 'information demand' power for law enforcement that does not require court oversight. The new power targets information about a subscriber, such as whether they use a particular internet service and if the provider has data about their usage. The provider may also be required to disclose where and when the service was used, as well as information about any other services the subscriber used to communicate. This is akin to law enforcement approaching a bank to demand if a particular person is a client and whether there is information about their account transactions, and which branches were used, but stopping short of asking for the actual account information. There are obvious privacy implications here that are certain to result in a legal challenge, should the bill pass in its current form. In most cases, obtaining further subscriber information will still require a warrant. The government is turning these into global production orders as it seeks to loop in foreign providers as well. This means that potential warrant targets extend well beyond Canadian internet and telecom providers to also include international platforms. Ottawa to overhaul financial-crime laws in new border security bill The standards for obtaining these production orders should give pause. This bill makes it easier to pass the threshold when compared with previous proposals, since law enforcement only needs to suspect that an offence has been or will be committed. Moreover, these orders can be applied to any Act of Parliament, granting law enforcement exceptional powers to pursue internet subscriber information for everything from Criminal Code violations to camping in national parks without the necessary permit. The bill introduces a new term – 'electronic service provider' – that is presumably designed to extend beyond telecom and internet providers by scoping in internet platforms such as Google and Meta. Those international services are now key players in electronic communications (think Gmail or WhatsApp), though some may be beyond this form of regulation, such as Signal. All electronic service providers are subject to obligations to 'provide all reasonable assistance, in any prescribed time and manner, to permit the assessment or testing of any device, equipment or other thing that may enable an authorized person to access information.' Moreover, all are required to keep such requests secret. Electronic service providers that the government views as 'core providers' are subject to additional regulations that effectively grant law enforcement direct access to their systems for the purposes of communications retrieval and interception. This is a revival of old proposals in which law enforcement sought access to the systems of Canada's major telecom and internet providers. These provisions will sound technical to most Canadians, and are seemingly designed to escape notice at the end of a 140-page bill purportedly about a safer border. But Bill C-2 is far from just a border bill. The government and law enforcement are running back a decades-old warrantless access playbook that should be roundly rejected as it trades a border crisis for a privacy one.
CTV News
25 minutes ago
- CTV News
Quebec says it will drop permanent immigration targets to as low as 25,000 per year
Jean-François Roberge, Quebec's Minister responsible for Democratic Institutions, in the Quebec National Assembly on Thursday, April 3, 2025. (Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press) Quebec's immigration minister says the government will drop its permanent immigration targets to as low as 25,000 people per year. Jean-François Roberge says the government will study three scenarios of 25,000, 35,000 and 45,000 immigrants per year. Currently, Quebec is projected to accept about 64,000 permanent immigrants in 2025. But Roberge says that needs to go down due to rising unemployment, increasing strain on housing and the challenges of protecting the French language. Roberge says Quebec also wants Ottawa to reduce the number of temporary immigrants in the province under federally managed programs to 200,000 from more than 400,000. The minister said the government will hold consultations on the changes before announcing its final 2026 to 2029 targets. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 5, 2026.
