From ‘How can we help you’ to ‘How will you harm us’
Five years after a cargo ship with 492 Sri Lankan migrants landed on Canada’s western shores, the rusting vessel sits at a government dock waiting to be dismantled, but debate over the government’s response to the mass arrival of Tamil refugee claimants still simmers.
Critics say the government’s crackdown on “irregular arrivals” amounted to a profound shift from Canada’s reputation as a country that took in refugees. An attitude of “how can we help you?” gave way to “how will you harm us?”
“Canada has become a dramatically less welcoming country for refugees,” the Canadian Council for Refugees wrote recently on its website in a paper titled Sun Sea: Five Years Later.
“Draconian laws are now on the books ... Rhetorical attacks on refugees have become commonplace.”
But Jason Kenney, who was the immigration minister at the time, told the National Post this week an aggressive posture was needed to prevent future boatloads of asylum-seekers from targeting our shores and clogging the resources of our immigration, border, police and health agencies.
“Canada cannot maintain one of the most generous immigration systems in the world if its integrity is being undermined by criminal syndicates. We felt that it was essential to act firmly to stop the smuggling boats,” he said, noting Canadian police and intelligence officials in Southeast Asia and West Africa later helped to disrupt several large-scale human-smuggling operations targeting Canada.
Just look at the situation in the Mediterranean right now, Kenney said, referring to the recent wave of migrants from the Middle East and Africa making the sometimes-perilous journey to Europe by boat.
“We did not want Canada’s inaction and passivity to be responsible for the unintended deaths of potentially hundreds of migrants crossing the Pacific Ocean.”
The arrival of the Sun Sea on Aug. 13, 2010, marked the end of a dangerous three-month journey for the 380 men, 63 women and 49 children crammed into the ship’s belly. Passengers typically paid smugglers $30,000 to $40,000.
When Canadian officials were alerted to the Sun Sea’s imminent arrival, they decided to take a more aggressive approach than they had done in the past — “to create a deterrent for future arrivals,” briefing documents later showed.
The year before, 76 Sri Lankan migrants had arrived on another vessel, the Ocean Lady. A decade before that, 600 Chinese migrants arrived on four boats.
As the Sun Sea approached, the Canada Border Services Agency instructed staff to “take maximum advantage” of detention as a tool and to build cases against the migrants that would show human smuggling “poses a significant threat to the health and safety” of Canadians.
Many Sun Sea migrants remain in protracted court battles. At the heart of many cases is whether publicity surrounding the ship puts them at risk of human rights abuses if returned to Sri Lanka.
The Supreme Court of Canada, meanwhile, is expected to rule soon on the cases of four Sun Sea passengers deemed inadmissible on the grounds of involvement in people smuggling. Their lawyers contend the government’s definition of what constitutes people smuggling is overly broad.
Martin Collacott, former high commissioner to Sri Lanka and a spokesman for the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform, says it’s important we continue to be generous in taking in refugees, but we should be doing it on our terms. That means requiring would-be migrants to apply from overseas.