Canada Border Services Agency has now lost business in 8 provinces
Ontario has joined seven other provinces in saying that it will no longer hold migrants in provincial jails who are being held for administrative reasons.
A Radio-Canada/CBC report came out earlier this week saying that Quebec and New Brunswick had ended their contracts with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). Under those contracts, the provinces were paid to lock up foreign nationals who were being held under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
After that news came out, human rights groups and immigration lawyers asked Ontario, where the CBSA holds the most migrants, to do the same.
On Thursday, Michael Kerzner, the Solicitor General of Ontario, told Marco Mendicino, the federal Minister of Public Safety, that his government was also canceling its contract.Under these agreements, the provinces have to give CBSA a year’s notice if they want to end the deal.
The Globe and Mail was the first to report on Ontario’s decision. The information was confirmed by Radio-Canada/CBC.
A ministry spokesperson told Radio-Canada/CBC, “Ontario’s correctional institutions should be focused on providing care and custody to people serving prison sentences or on remand, not on immigration detainees, which is the federal government’s job.”
Years behind bar
Many immigrants have been locked up in provincial jails for years without knowing when they would be released.
Abdirahman Warssama, who was born in Somalia, spent five years and seven months in maximum security jails in Ontario, including one in Lindsay, Ont., which is about 135 kilometers northeast of Toronto.
Warssama, like the other immigrants being held at the time, was never charged with a crime. Still, he was locked up with hardened criminals while the CBSA tried and failed to get him sent back to Somalia.
From 2015 to 2020, about a quarter of the 8,000 migrants the CBSA detained every year were sent to provincial jails.
By the 2021-2022 fiscal year, the number of immigrants in jail had dropped to about 3,000, but about a quarter of them were still being held in provincial jails. Most of the rest were sent to federal holding centers for immigrants.
Now, Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick have also ended their contracts with CBSA, joining British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.
Mendicino and Sean Fraser, the Immigration Minister, both said on Tuesday that they haven’t decided what will happen to the immigration detainees in those jails. Some of these agreements are about to expire in a few weeks.
Many people who fight for migrant rights are worried about the lack of a federal plan.
2 remaining province
Even though it doesn’t have a formal agreement with CBSA, Prince Edward Island is still letting migrants stay in its provincial jails for now.
The P.E.I. Department of Justice and Public Safety told Radio-Canada and CBC that the CBSA started talking about making a formal agreement in 2020, but that the province “put an end to those talks in 2021.”
The province will keep an eye on how other provinces move forward to make sure that P.E.I. is in line with an agreed-upon standard, the department said without giving more details.
Newfoundland and Labrador said they don’t have a formal agreement with CBSA, but they wouldn’t say if they would keep holding immigration detainees like they have in the past.CBSA also refused to say anything.