Plan to triage asylum seekers stalled by Ontario election
A plan to “triage’’ asylum seekers crossing the Canada-U.S. border illegally, in an effort to move some migrants out of Quebec and into Ontario, has stalled because Ontario is in the midst of a provincial election.
Federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau says Ontario civil servants have been working on details of the plan with the federal government and Quebec, but nothing can be finalized until a new provincial government is in place.
“There’s a lot of very hard work being done by civil servants who work for Immigration Ontario to look at the whole issue of the triage, which is more than just a reception centre. It’s the whole process of absorbing people who want to go to Ontario. And that entails resources — financial resources, and other kinds of resources, manpower resources,’’ Garneau told reporters Wednesday.
“There is an election going on and, when it’s all in place, there will be a requirement to get the new government of Ontario, whatever that government is, to sign onto that.’’
The ad hoc intergovernmental task force on irregular migration met Wednesday evening to discuss the ongoing issue of illegal border crossers and how to address pressures facing Quebec, where the vast majority of irregular migrants are arriving.
The group of federal and provincial officials also met last month, when they reached agreements on measures including the creation of a so-called triage system to identify asylum seekers interested in going to areas outside Montreal or Toronto to await the outcome of their refugee claims. A pedestrian walks past the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa.
A Jehovah’s Witness who was expelled from a Calgary congregation cannot take his case to a judge, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.
In a 9-0 decision Thursday, the high court said the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench has no jurisdiction to review the congregation’s decision to shun Randy Wall over alleged drunkenness and verbal abuse.
“In the end, religious groups are free to determine their own membership and rules,’’ Justice Malcolm Rowe wrote in the decision, adding that courts will not intervene in such matters unless it is necessary to resolve an underlying legal dispute.
Several religious organizations took an active interest in the case, given questions about the degree to which the courts can scrutinize decisions by faithbased bodies. Wall, an independent realtor, was summoned in 2014 to appear before the judicial committee of the Highwood Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a four-person panel of elders.
He admitted to two episodes of drunkenness and, on one of those occasions, verbally abusing his wife — wrongdoing he attributed to family stress over the earlier expulsion of his 15-year old daughter from the congregation.
The judicial committee told Wall, a congregation member since 1980, that he, too, would be expelled because he was not sufficiently repentant.
Members who are “disfellowshipped’’ may still attend congregational meetings, but they are permitted to speak only to immediate family members about non-spiritual matters.
An appeal committee upheld the decision, prompting Wall to pursue the matter in provincial court. He alleged the congregational judicial committee did not give him proper notice, an adequate opportunity to be heard or reasons for its decision.
The congregation argued that Wall’s application for review should be tossed out because a secular court had no jurisdiction to review a religious tribunal’s decision.
In a submission to the Court of Queen’s Bench, Wall said that his real estate clients — about half of whom belonged to Jehovah’s Witness congregations — refused to conduct business with him any longer. A judge concluded the court had jurisdiction to hear the case on the grounds that being shunned had an economic impact on Wall.
The provincial Court of Appeal upheld the decision, and the congregation then took its arguments to the Supreme Court.