(Ottawa) Trump-inspired “invisible wall” for New Democrats, “great news” for Liberals. Gray areas surround the new terms of the Safe Third Countries Agreement and questions are being raised about its application after a first weekend of Roxham Road lockdown.
Posted at 6:16 p.m
The Trudeau administration was pleased to have tightened the screw and made the announcement during President Joe Biden’s visit to Canada last Friday. In one camp as in the other, it is seen as a means of promoting orderly migration to the border.
The deal was signed a year ago, but with Washington having to go through “operationalization,” it took months for it to come into effect — and if there were a few hours between the announcement and the unofficial closure of the checkpoints, that was a crush to avoid, a government source in Ottawa said.
The agreement will therefore henceforth be applied along the approximately 8,900 km border between Canada and the United States. In return, 15,000 migrants will be admitted through regular channels over the next 12 months. Where will they come from? How will we choose them?
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Secretary Sean Fraser had no answers Monday. “Obviously, I’m thinking of Haiti, not only because of the situation there, but also because of the close ties that the Haitian people have with Canadian communities,” he said at a press conference in Toronto.
PHOTO ADRIAN WYLD, THE CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVE
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Secretary Sean Fraser
He declined to say whether the United States had asked more of Canada in return for the 15,000 people who will be taken in here — nearly 40,000 migrants took Roxham Road in 2022 alone, and more than two million migrants crossed the border between the two United States and Mexico.
“We never wanted to approach it from the point of view of swapping one person for another. I find it difficult to imagine that this concept is a reason to start bilateral negotiations,” the minister argued after announcing a project to hire refugees and other qualified displaced persons.
Some interceptions at Roxham
Clearly, the time for in-depth reviews has not yet come for the authorities responsible for applying the agreement to Roxham Road. However, over the weekend, La Presse was told by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).
“According to preliminary data, from March 25 at 12:01 am EDT to March 26 at midnight EDT, 16 requests were processed; 9 asylum seekers were deported to the United States […] and 7 were deemed eligible to pursue their application for protection in Canada,” wrote CBSA spokesman Guillaume Bérubé.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
On Roxham Road, on the American side, the day after the closure
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police declined to comment on the implications of the revised agreement, specifically the application of the provision that intercepted persons be turned back within 14 days of crossing the border.
“We are deploying our border resources in areas that are most vulnerable between points of entry. It is the nature of our policing to adapt our interventions and our resources,” said a spokeswoman, Tasha Adams.
On the subject, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didn’t go into much more detail.
“The system we put in place at Roxham was to analyze people so they could stay. Now we don’t have to do the same level of process,” he argued with the press during a brief scuffle before bursting into the house.
“Invisible Wall”
There, New Democrat Jenny Kwan fell head over heels in love with the Trudeau government during Question Time.
“Liberals secretly brokered a deal to close the entire Canada-US border with an invisible wall. […] Why do liberals draw inspiration from the Book of? [Donald] Trump card? ‘ she protested.
According to her, Bloc Québécois Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe wondered what would happen to the contract without a ten-year tender, which was granted to a businessman close to the Liberal Party, Pierre Guay, near Roxham Road1.
Marie-France Lalonde, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister Fraser, replied to her interlocutors that it was a “great victory”, “excellent news” and that the migration system is now characterized by “compassion” and “benevolence”.
And the Supreme Court?
The bilateral pact has been renegotiated while it is before the Supreme Court of Canada. The hearing in the country’s highest court took place on October 2 and the verdict is expected to be announced in the coming weeks.
“While we cannot speculate on the verdict, we are developing contingency plans for all possible scenarios,” immigration spokesman Rémi Larivière said in an email.