The Safe Third Country Agreement decision should be a wake-up call for Ottawa
Michael Barutciski is co-ordinator of Canadian Studies at York University’s Glendon College. He was previously director of the diplomacy program at the University of Canterbury Law School and fellow in law at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre.
But contrary to the general impression left by the country’s media and academic establishments, the one-sided narrative that refugee advocates are contesting inhumane laws is too simplistic. Yet many refugee advocates have simply never accepted co-operation between the two continental partners, because they believe U.S. standards are not satisfactory. That’s why variants of this legal challenge have been initiated since the late 1980s, resulting in two Canadian trial judges accepting the advocates’ bold position: that the U.S. asylum system violates international law.
But the case ultimately suffered from the same problem affecting their initial victory more than 15 years ago: they brushed away criticisms from appeal courts and overestimated the strength of their case. Less progressive groupthink could help them in future challenges to the questionable practices they have raised. They will have another chance: the STCA judgment referred the issue of potential Charter-violating gender-based persecution in the U.S. back to a trial judge.
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