UN pans Canadian immigration system

A UN report has raised the alarm over Canada’s lengthy immigration detention and the lack of medical support for inmates with mental health conditions.

Those were among the many concerns over the changes made to the immigration and refugee system by Ottawa in recent years that are raised in a country report released by the United Nations Human Rights Committee on Thursday.

“The State party should refrain from detaining irregular migrants for an indefinite period of time and should ensure that detention is used as a measure of last resort, that a reasonable time limit for detention is set,” said the committee, made up of 17 independent international experts.

The seven-page report is the result of a review of Canada’s human rights conditions, conducted earlier this month to ensure the country’s compliance with global agreements on civil and political rights.

Renu Mandhane, executive director of the International Human Rights Program at U of T, was among the deputants who presented to the committee in Geneva.

“We are, overall, quite pleased that the committee recognized that indefinite detention and the lack of alternatives are serious problems with the system in Canada,” Mandhane said in an interview.

“It hits all the key points we have raised. The fact that the Canadian government is required to report back within a year on its recommendations speaks to the seriousness of the issue.”

Canada’s immigration detention system has been under the spotlight in recent years, after the deaths of detainees in custody, including Mexican migrant Lucia Vega Jimenez in Vancouver in 2013 and Somali native Abdurahman Ibrahim Hassan, a mentally ill man who died in a Peterborough hospital in June.

Last year alone, Canada detained 8,519 people — more than half in Ontario — who violated immigration law. While detainees were held an average of 23 days, 58 individuals had been detained for more than a year, including four who had been in jail for five years and more.