Refugee claim statistics, year end 2006

Total number of claims: 22,887 (in 2005: 19,624; in 2004: 25,521)

62% of claims were made inland
20% of claims were made at the US-Canada border
18% of claims were made at an airport

(This percentage breakdown is very similar to 2005. In 2004 (pre-safe third) 35% of claims were made at the US-Canada border.)

Region where claims made:
63% in Ontario
30% in Québec
5% in BC
2% in Prairies
0.3% in Atlantic

(There is some shift here from 2005 when there were 69% claims in Ontario, 24% in Québec. In 2004, 71% of claims were in Ontario, only 22% in Québec.)

Top offices where claims made:
Etobicoke: 7,806 - 34% of all claims
Montreal inland: 3,552 - 16% of all claims
Fort Erie Peace Bridge: 2,424 - 11% of all claims
Trudeau Airport: 2,108 - 9% of all claims
Toronto airports: 1,799 - 8%
Lacolle: 826 - 4% of all claims
Windsor Ambassador Bridge: 770 - 3% of all claims
Vancouver inland: 615 - 3%
(These offices together represent 87% of all claims)

Total claims in Atlantic: 67 (63 in 2005)
Total claims in Prairies: 476 (363 in 2005)

570 claims were found ineligible (just over 2% of all claims)
Of these, 403 (71%) were ineligible based on safe third
149 (26%) were ineligible because of a previous claim
10 were ineligible because of refugee status in another country
4 were ineligible on security grounds, 1 for violating human rights and 3 for serious criminality.

In 23 cases, consideration of eligibility was suspended

The top country of origin of claimants was Mexico: 4,914 claims (representing 21% of all claims)

Of claims made at the land border, the top countries of origin were:

Colombia: 748
Haiti: 489
Zimbabwe: 462
US: 403
Burundi: 360
DRC: 229
El Salvador: 187

* Note that a large proportion of the claims from US citizens are likely the young children of claimants from other countries (such as Colombian) who had been in the US before making a claim in Canada.

For those exempted from safe third country, 48% were exempt based on moratorium countries, and 31% based on family. There were 245 minors recorded as principal applicants. There were still no exemptions for death penalty.

Male claimants at the land border outnumbered female: 54% to 46%.

These figures are calculated from monthly statistics provided through the year by CIC. Note that statistics tend to “settle” with time, so there will be some adjustment with final stats for the whole year. CIC has still not provided the CCR with final stats for 2005.

Toronto Star
Just when can we trust U.S.?
January 25, 2007
Thomas Walkom

American Ambassador David Wilkins is right when he says that it's up to Washington – not Ottawa – to decide whether Canadian Maher Arar can enter the United States. He's right but misses the point.

The U.S. is a sovereign nation and can do whatever it wants. As Wilkins said yesterday, it is "presumptuous" for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day to tell Americans whom they should let in.

If Americans want to refuse entry to Arar, a Muslim they sent to be tortured in Syria, they have that right. If they want to keep out Lutherans, or blonds, or vegetarians or simply every tenth Canadian attempting to cross the international border, they can do that, too.

Their country, their rules.

But what Wilkins and Day don't seem to understand is that the dispute over Washington's decision to treat Arar as a terror suspect is not just about this particular Canadian computer engineer. It casts into question the entire rationale for sharing intelligence information between Canada and the United States.

If Canada can't trust American judgment in this case, how can it co-operate in others? If U.S. intelligence is as unreliable as Day suggests, why is he moving ahead full-bore to further integrate Canadian and American security systems in areas such as no-fly lists?

Day says he's seen the still-classified U.S. file on Arar, but that the information in it is unconvincing – that it does not alter the Canadian government's view, based on an exhaustive public inquiry, that Arar is absolutely innocent of anything even remotely resembling terrorism.

Yet the federal government seemingly does accept as gospel U.S. intelligence in other areas.

For instance, Ottawa is trying to deport Algerian Mohamed Harkat as a security threat, in large part because of information the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency claims it received from an Al Qaeda suspect it's been interrogating in one of its secret prisons.

Even putting aside the probability that this information was obtained under duress (which, as Harkat's lawyer Paul Copeland says, does cast doubt on its reliability) what if – as in the case of Arar – it's just plain wrong-headed? Indeed, it is sobering to remember that if Arar had not been fully investigated – and vindicated – by a judicial inquiry, the Canadian government almost certainly would have accepted unquestioningly the U.S. claim that he remains a dangerous terror suspect.

That's because we've been taking our cues on these matters from the Americans.

After the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, Ottawa moved quickly to integrate its security and intelligence apparatus more closely with that of the U.S.

In practical terms, as Justice Dennis O'Connor's inquiry into Arar discovered, that meant funnelling more information to the Americans and allowing U.S. agents to sit in on all Canadian security meetings.

Indeed, O'Connor concluded that it was probably the RCMP's promiscuous sharing of rumour, innuendo and misinformation that persuaded the Americans to arrest Arar in 2002 in New York, and ship him to Syria for torture

Under the new regime of co-operation, Canada also allowed the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other U.S. agencies to send more operatives into Canada.

One example came to light inadvertently last June after native protestors at Caledonia near Hamilton hijacked what they took to be a suspicious vehicle that had been cruising near their blockade. As it turned out, it was a U.S. Border Patrol car containing Canadian and American agents, including one from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

As well, Canada's soon-to-be-unveiled no-fly list is almost certainly linked to its U.S. counterpart, according to experts in the field. (Ottawa won't say one way or the other).

In short, we take our cue from the Americans when it comes to security. We assume that they know what they are talking about.

Washington's intransigence on the Arar case blasts a hole in that theory. It is making serious allegations about Arar, perhaps to derail a lawsuit he has filed against the U.S. administration, perhaps for other reasons. Canada's government has seen the American evidence and discounted it. In effect, Day and Harper are saying that America's judgment in this matter is not only unfair but also seriously flawed.

Yet if we can't trust the U.S. government to behave rationally here, how can we trust it in other matters involving national security?

As Wilkins says, we don't have the right to tell American leaders what to do in their own country. But if they are temporarily deranged, surely we are under no obligation to co-operate.

One official's 'refugee' is another's 'terrorist'
IRB criticized for dissimilar rulings on similar cases
Adrian Humphreys, National Post
Published: Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Two members of the same foreign organization who applied for refugee status in Canada have received dramatically different judgments: One was declared a member of a terrorist group, the other accepted as a legitimate refugee.

The vast discrepancy between decisions in remarkably similar cases -- based on the same package of government evidence -- highlights the difficulties of handling security cases and has drawn judicial consternation.

"The packages of documentary evidence in the two cases were the same, the time frame the same, and the issue to be determined was the same," writes Michael L. Phelan, a Federal Court of Canada judge, in a judgment published yesterday.

"In one case a member held an organization not to be engaged in terrorism, while in the instant case, on the very same evidence, the member found that the organization had engaged in terrorism," he ruled.

"The failure to explain the basis for the different conclusion undermines the integrity of [Immigration and Refugee Board] decisions and gives them an aura of arbitrariness which is no doubt not intended nor is it acceptable."

The answer, for Judge Phelan, was to send the case of Mohammad Ashraf Siddiqui -- in which the Pakistan-based Mohajir Quomi Movement (MQM) was found to be an organization that engaged in terrorism -- back to the Immigration and Refugee Board for a fresh hearing.

The case of the second man, Javed Memon -- in which evidence of terrorist involvement by the MQM was dismissed -- also remains in dispute.

The government has appealed that decision, with hearings on the matter pending.

The divergent assessments of the same evidence on such an important issue shocks a leading terrorism researcher.

"The notion of terrorism is fairly straightforward -- it is ideologically or politically motivated violence directed against civilian targets. I'm surprised that there are disagreements among judges," said Professor Martin Rudner, director of the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies at Ottawa's Carleton University.

"There is the famous statement: 'One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.' But that is grossly leading. It assesses the validity of the cause when terrorism is an act. One can have a perfectly beautiful cause and yet if one commits terrorist acts, it is terrorism regardless," he said.
At the heart of the two Vancouver cases is the MQM, a political party in Pakistan with a controversial past, including involvement in sectarian strife and infighting.

Mr. Siddiqui was born in 1969 in Pakistan. While at college, he attended meetings of a student organization, which later became the MQM, he told immigration officials.

In 1990, the MQM split into two factions, known as the MQM-A and the MQM-H. Both Mr. Siddiqui and Mr. Memon said they were members of the MQM-A.

Mr. Siddiqui said he worked for the MQM-A in the 1993 election, during which he was kidnapped by members of the rival MQM-H and held for five days, he said. After his release, he was forced to pay the organization 3,000 rupees a month.

In 1994, after a demand for more money, he fled to Canada where he claimed refugee status. In 1999, he was found to be a refugee. He married a Canadian woman and settled in British Columbia.

In 2001, however, he applied for an exemption to the immigrant visa requirements,

an application that reignited the government's interest in his past with the MQM-A and sent him to the IRB for an admissibility hearing. Mr. Memon's story is similar.

He was born in 1964 in Pakistan and is also well-educated.

He told the IRB that he became influenced by the MQM in 1992 and then joined in 1994.

"Because they were doing good work and they were helping the poor people, especially for education and the people who were sick, they were opening hospitals," he said, according to a transcript of his testimony before the IRB.

He worked on donation drives and membership drives and attended demonstrations, he told the IRB, until he, under pressure, left for Canada in 1998.

He too married a Canadian woman and runs a restaurant in B.C.

Neither man hid his association with the MQM-A from the Canadian government when they applied for their refugee status and both said at their hearings that they were involved in only peaceful protests and political activity.

Both men rejected knowledge of MQM-A's involvement in terrorist or violent acts and both said they do not believe such accounts.

In both cases, the IRB adjudicators heard the government's package of evidence regarding the MQM-A, including allegations of violent confrontations and the running of torture chambers targeting dissidents and opponents.
The information included correspondence with the MQM, documents from Amnesty International, the British government, the Office of International Criminal Justice, the IRB's Research Directorate, Jane's Intelligence Review, media reports, and others.

Daphne Shaw Dyck, an adjudicator with the IRB, ruled in Mr. Siddiqui's case.

"I have reasonable grounds to believe that the MQM under the firm control of [Altaf ] Hussain is not only a legitimate political party but also an armed opposition group that commits acts of violence," she ruled.

"In my view there is sufficient specificity in the kidnappings, murders and rapes and other acts of torture that took place as a result of torture chambers run by the MQM."

Ms. Shaw Dyck also ruled that the MQM tried to "intentionally cause death or serious bodily injury to party dissidents or political opponents in order to intimidate them. Thus the facts that I have reasonable grounds to believe fit the definition of terrorism."

Leeann King heard Mr. Memon's case. She ruled otherwise on the same evidence.

"I find, however, that the Minister's evidence is insufficient to show that the MQM-A has committed terrorist acts. I consider the documentary evidence is either not credible or too vague to find there are reasonable grounds to believe the MQM-A has committed terrorist acts."

Melissa Anderson, a spokeswoman for the IRB said each of its decisions stands on its own merits and that the appeals processes are in place when a party believes errors were made. The Federal Court backed that up.

Judge Phelan said in his ruling that there is "no strict legal requirement" that an IRB adjudicator follow the factual findings of another member.

"What undermines the [IRB's] decision [in the Siddiqui case] is the failure to address the contradictory finding in the Memon decision."

He ruled that Mr. Siddiqui is entitled, as a matter of fairness, to an explanation of why, when two IRB adjudicators "reviewing the same documents on the same issue, could reach a different conclusion."

La Presse
FRAIS ANNUELS D'EXPLOITATION DU CENTRE DE SURVEILLANCE DE L'IMMIGRATION À KINGSTON

Deux millions pour surveiller trois présumés terroristes
5 janvier 2006

Caroline Touzin

Trois présumés terroristes. Une prison spéciale de 3,2 millions de dollars qui a coûté trois fois plus cher que prévu. Et des frais d’exploitation de 2 millions par an, dont 1,6 million en salaires. C’est ce que révèlent des documents du ministère fédéral de la Sécurité publique, obtenus par La Presse à la suite d’une demande d’accès à l’information.

Deux Égyptiens et un Syrien sont détenus en vertu d’un certificat de sécurité au nouveau Centre de surveillance de l’immigration de Kingston, situé sur le terrain de la prison Millhaven. Ses détracteurs appellent ce centre à très haute sécurité le «Guantanamo du Nord». Ouvert en avril dernier, il contient six cellules pour autant de prisonniers.

Il y a deux cellules dans chacune des trois unités mobiles de 50 mètres carrés.

La liste détaillée des coûts d’ouverture de la prison montre que 7000$ ont été dépensés pour les loisirs des détenus (vélos stationnaires, salle d’exercices, livres, jeux et télévision câblée). L’équipement de sécurité, dont un scanner pour détecter l’entrée de drogues, cinq masques à gaz et un système de surveillance vidéo, a coûté 125 000$. Une autre somme de 100 000$ a été consacrée à la formation des futurs employés. La construction a coûté 2,5 millions. Au total, les dépenses d’ouverture se chiffrent à 3 123 200$, alors que sa construction était évaluée à un peu plus de 1 million six mois plus tôt.

Cette somme n’inclut pas les coûts liés aux soins de santé prodigués aux détenus, ni au transport des prisonniers, ni aux interventions de l’«équipe de crise» (3500 $ par intervention), peut-on lire dans un document du Service correctionnel Canada (SCC) de mars 2006.

Le SCC prévoit dépenser près de 1,6 million en salaires chaque année. Et près de 300 000$ en frais d’exploitation, ce qui inclut la nourriture et les soins d’hygiène. Le ministère de la Sécurité publique a refusé de nous fournir les salaires du directeur de la prison et du gestionnaire du projet. Toutes les dépenses ont été calculées en fonction de quatre détenus.

Ce qui explique les dépassements de coûts? «La prison a été construite sous les libéraux», répond l’attachée de presse du ministre de la Sécurité publique Stockwell Day, Mélisa Leclerc. Pour plus de détails, le cabinet du ministre réfère à l’Agence des servics frontaliers du Canada, responsable de la prison spéciale avec Service correctionnel Canada. Le boom dans l’industrie de la construction, du temps froid et des « ajustements mineurs » ont fait augmenter les coûts, selon plusieurs courriels entre les responsables du projet obtenus dans la même demande d’accès à l’information.
Plus que le client n’en demande?

Le consultant en matière de sécurité nationale, Michel Juneau-Katsuya, remet en question la nécessité de construire une prison spéciale pour les détenus en vertu d’un certificat de sécurité. «C’est certain que ça coûte des sous de s’occuper de ces gars-là. Mais aurait-on pu leur trouver une place déjà existante, un bout d’aile de prison peut-être? Est-ce qu’on en met plus que le client en demande? L’a-t-on fait pour faire plaisir aux Américains? Toutes ces questions sont valables», dit l’expert en terrorisme.

C’est «deux poids, deux mesures» au Canada quand il est question de certificats de sécurité, croit M. Juneau-Katsuya. Il donne l’exemple du présumé espion russe arrêté à Montréal en novembre dernier en vertu d’un certificat. «Pourquoi n’a-t-il pas été envoyé à Kingston en attendant son expulsion? On envoie des Arabes terroristes à Kingston et on garde l’espion russe à Montréal», souligne-t-il.

Le certificat de sécurité est une mesure, contenue dans la Loi de l’immigration et de la protection des réfugiés. Elle permet au gouvernement de détenir et d’expulser du pays des individus qu’il considère une menace à la sécurité du Canada, sans avoir à leur intenter un procès.

Grève de la faim

Les trois détenus, insatisfaits de leurs conditions de détention, ont cessé de manger depuis au moins un mois. L’Agence des services frontaliers refuse de parler de «grève de la faim». Il est vrai qu’ils «refusent de manger», dit le porte-parole de l’Agence, Derek Mellon. Mais pour faire une «grève de la faim», il faudrait que les détenus ne consomment que de l’eau durant au moins sept jours.

Or, ils boivent des jus de fruits. «On continue à leur offrir l’accès aux soins médicaux, trois repas par jour, l’accès à une infirmière et à la salle d’exercices», assure M. Mellon.

«Ils se plaignaient dans les prisons provinciales qu’ils voulaient aller dans une prison fédérale. Maintenant qu’ils sont au fédéral, ils veulent revenir au provincial. C’est un cercle vicieux», ajoute Mélisa Leclerc, du ministère de la Sécurité publique.

Les détenus sont Hassan Almrei, Mohammad Mahjoub et Mahmoud Jaballah. Le premier est originaire de la Syrie et les deux autres, de l’Égypte. Mahjoub a été arrêté en juin 2000, Almrei en octobre 2001 et Jaballah, en août 2001. Ils sont soupçonnés d’appartenir à des organisations terroristes différentes. Le réfugié algérien Mohammed Harkat a été emprisonné avec eux jusqu’en mai dernier.

Après avoir passé trois ans en prison, il a été libéré à plusieurs conditions, dont celle de porter en tout temps un bracelet de surveillance électronique.

Deux millions! pour surveiller trois présumés terroristes
Translated into English by: George C. Owens