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A few months ago, Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney (who notoriously once stated that “Canada isn’t a hotel”) announced new visa requirements for people visiting Canada from Mexico and the Czech Republic. People from those countries now “have to apply for temporary resident visas in order to visit, study or work in Canada.” The reason? Those two countries are the top sources of applications for refugee status. Kenney’s argument at the time was that “many of the asylum requests are either rejected or abandoned, raising questions about the legitimacy of the claimants’ allegations that they face persecution in their home countries.”

In other words, the Canadian state responded to a high volume of refugee claims not by giving more resources to the people who evaluate the claims, nor by finding better ways to separate “genuine” refugees from those filing false claims, but by making it harder to apply for refugee status — as if the only real refugees are the ones with the resources to get around the arbitrary obstacles that Canada’s immigration bureaucracy puts in their way.

And now we learn that deportations from Canada have increased dramatically over the past ten years — and the majority of those deported are failed refugee claimants:

Figures obtained by The Canadian Press through Access to Information show Canada removed 12,732 people last year — a major increase from the 8,361 who were deported in 1999.

A series of steady increases over the years shows no sign of abating in 2009. By Aug. 25 of this year, 8,999 had already been deported.

Statistics from the Canada Border Services Agency show failed refugee claimants accounted for three-quarters of deportations while the remainder were often removed on criminal or security grounds.

[...]

The government explains the spike in deportations as the logical result of a jump in refugee applications; there were 35,000 refugee claims last year, and the government says the system can only handle 25,000. [...] But the stats cast some doubt on Ottawa’s explanation. Figures obtained from the Immigration and Refugee Board indicate the 35,000 refugee applications received last year is no record.

While the figure represented a six-year high, it was still far less than the 44,000 cases received in 2001 and 39,000 in the following year. While there was an increase in claims in 2008, the government also completed far fewer cases than in the past.

Refugee advocates say the explanation is simple: the government has wanted to deport more people, and has taken steps to do it in recent years.

(I highly recommend reading the whole article, which goes into detail about some of the failures of the current immigration system and the appalling consequences for rejected refugee claimants.)

There’s an interesting bit of circular reasoning at work here. The rationale for the new visa requirements was that most refugee claims are rejected; the implication was that most such claims were made under false pretences. But we know that the people who control Canada’s borders have been intentionally rejecting more applicants as a matter of policy. Then they use the resulting increase in rejections as a pretext to keep more and more people out of the country. It’s a deliberate vicious cycle — and the people who get screwed are the ones trying to escape misery and persecution back home. That’s one hell of a legacy, Mr. Kenney.

Several hours of surveillance footage recorded at Vancouver airport the night Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski was Tasered and died were inadvertently erased by the Canada Border Services Agency a week after his death, The Vancouver Sun has learned.

The CBSA is claiming the deletion was unintentional — a result of “confusion over how long the footage would be stored before being erased.” If this is true, then the CBSA is criminally incompetent. I sure hope it’s true, because the alternative is that the CBSA deliberately deleted footage of their own misdeeds. But the authorities would never mislead us about something like that, right?

Either way, the results are the same: Robert Dziekanski was murdered by bureaucratic incompetence and police brutality.

Fortunately, the cops aren’t worried about it:

The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, which is investigating Dziekanski’s death, said Thursday it wasn’t aware the CBSA’s original footage had been erased.

However, IHIT spokesman Cpl. Dale Carr said the team is not worried because one of its investigators reviewed the complete footage before it was erased and was confident all clips of Dziekanski are on the DVD.

“What? They destroyed evidence that might have been crucial to our investigation? This is the first we’ve heard of it. Hey, Jim, you watched all that footage, right? Do you think we might be missing anything important?”

“Gee, Lieutenant, I don’t know. I only watched it that one time, and that was just a few days after the guy died.”

“Before he had that unfortunate reaction to a 50,000-volt shock, you mean.”

“Uh, right. And it was a lot of footage, too — six hours of it! And boy, was it boring.”

“That’s why you made this videotape of all the important parts, right?”

“Well, yeah, but if I’d known they were gonna delete the tapes on us, I would have been a lot more careful about — ”

“You’re not saying you might have … missed something, are you?”

“I sure hope not, Lieutenant.”

“Right. See, folks? Nothing to worry about. Everything’s under control.”

From the Canadian Press:

Ottawa is exploring the possibility of allowing the private sector to finance and operate a new border crossing at Canada’s busiest point of entry to the United States, Trade and Infrastructure Minister Lawrence Cannon said Monday.

The clear signal that the federal government is entertaining private involvement in a second bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ont., comes amid new polling data that suggests nearly two-thirds of Canadians support the idea of public-private partnerships.

The poll in question was commissioned by the Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships, and you can read it for yourself, if you like. It’s quite the piece of work. Apparently these are the questions they asked:

1. Governments are having trouble keeping pace with demands for new or improved public infrastructure and services. Do you agree or disagree?
2. It is time to allow the private sector to deliver these types of services in partnership with governments. Do you agree or disagree?
3. If your access to services remained the same, if the quality of services was the same or better and if the cost to you was no more than if the government was providing the service, would you support or oppose private sector involvement in the following areas: [and a bunch of service sectors are listed].

Aren’t access, quality of services, and cost three of the key issues surrounding privatization? (They also left out accountability, which to my mind would be the fourth.) How can you trust a poll that dodges those issues? And yet the Canadian Press story pretty much ignores the evident bias here. Sure, it quotes a union boss saying that the survey is “very short on questions that relate to access, cost and quality concerns,” but the reporter doesn’t follow that up — instead, the poll results are discussed as if they were reliable.

Also worth noting:

Security at the border crossing would continue to be the domain of Canadian and American border agencies, said David McFadden, chairman of communications for The Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships.

“What the private sector does is maintain the infrastructure, make sure it’s properly paved, cleaned, things of that nature,” McFadden said.

Let’s hope they stick to that. I’m not holding my breath, though: the article goes on to point out that Cannon “did say that a private-sector partner could ‘operate’ the crossing.” It would be nice if they could at least get their stories straight.