{"id":49191,"date":"2015-05-14T09:50:54","date_gmt":"2015-05-14T01:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=49191"},"modified":"2015-05-14T09:50:54","modified_gmt":"2015-05-14T01:50:54","slug":"ottawa-introduces-new-legislation-to-speed-up-removal-of-foreign-criminals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/05\/14\/ottawa-introduces-new-legislation-to-speed-up-removal-of-foreign-criminals\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa introduces new legislation to speed up removal of foreign criminals"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Public<\/a>
Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney addresses the public about the fight against human trafficking. Photo courtesy of Blaney’s official Facebook page.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TORONTO — The federal government has introduced new legislation to speed up the process of removing foreign nationals who have committed serious crimes in Canada.<\/p>\n

Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Steven Blaney said the Removal of Serious Foreign Criminals Act was tabled in the House of Commons Tuesday.<\/p>\n

“What we are saying is if you are committing a crime in Canada and you are a foreign criminal, you are ineligible to stay in this country and you should go back home,” Blaney said at a news conference in Toronto.<\/p>\n

The proposed legislation would allow the mandatory transfer of foreign criminals back to their original countries without their consent — the only consent needed being from the home country, Blaney said.<\/p>\n

He said the pardon process will also be changed.<\/p>\n

“We will ensure that all foreign nationals and certain permanent residents who have been convicted of serious crimes will no longer be able to avoid removal by seeking record suspensions — previously referred to as pardons,” Blaney said.<\/p>\n

He said there have been cases where foreign nationals who have committed serious crimes have received pardons and allowed to remain the country.<\/p>\n

“We can never allow that to happen again,” Blaney said.<\/p>\n

And, Blaney added, refugees who are deemed a danger to the Canadian public would have their protected person status revoked when they are removed from the country.<\/p>\n

“This will ensure that they cannot attempt to re-enter Canada with that status and cannot access the rights and benefits accorded that status,” Blaney said.<\/p>\n

Blaney said part of the proposed legislation will be to give more power to government officials to “issue removal orders to permanent residents who are inadmissible due to criminal activity.”<\/p>\n

“In this way we can eliminate the requirement for a formal hearing and ensure that removal orders are issued faster because, for example, a criminal judge has already ruled on the culpability of the individual.”<\/p>\n

Lorne Waldman, an immigration lawyer in Toronto, has “significant concerns” about the government’s new bill.<\/p>\n

“The problem with all of this is how efficient will the safeguards be that will be put in place to ensure that the deportation doesn’t lead to a serious violation of human rights?” Waldman said.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think this will make our society any safer — it’s just the further erosion of the due process rights by the government.”<\/p>\n

The bill builds on similar measures introduced in recent years that are part of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s tough-on-crime agenda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO — The federal government has introduced new legislation to speed up the process of removing foreign nationals who have …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":19855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,18,6,483],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-news-ca","category-immigration","category-politics","mauthors-liam-casey","mauthors-the-canadian-press1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}