Bill C-31, the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act, will result in the arbitrary detention, intimidation, failure to protect, and ultimate re-victimization of highly vulnerable people who seek asylum in Canada, especially the most vulnerable among them, women and children. If the changes proposed under Bill C-31 are passed into law, a significant number of women will never have their own risk of persecution or hardship assessed, prior to being deported from Canada. The Barbra Schlifer Clinic, METRAC, and LEAF, three organizations dedicated to women’s equality and to ending violence against women, presented their concerns about the Bill in a written Submission to the Commons Committee on Bill C-31, which concluded hearings this week.

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New website launch: http://komagatamarujourney.ca

More than just an isolated “incident”, The Komagata Maru story reflects a deliberate, exclusionary policy of the Canadian government to keep out ethnicities with whom it deemed unfit to enter. These justifications were couched in racist and ethnocentric views of “progress”, “civilization”, and “suitability” which all buttressed the view that Canada should remain a “White Man’s Country”.

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CARLOS OSORIO/TORONTO STAR

Ontario nurses are urging the Harper government to scrap its plans to reduce health care coverage for refugee claimants or face the fact people will die. Ottawa announced in April it will strip thousands of refugees of health-care coverage starting in July unless their conditions pose a threat to public health. “Ontario’s nurses, like health-care professionals from across the country, are gravely concerned that these dangerous changes will threaten the lives and well-being of people who have already experienced trauma and hardship before they arrived in Canada,” Doris Grinspun, chief executive officer of Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, said in a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

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John Cotter, The Canadian Press Jun 6, 2012 – 5:38 PM ET | Last Updated: Jun 6, 2012 5:40 PM ET

EDMONTON — The federal government has set up a counter-terrorism unit in Alberta and one of its main jobs will be to help protect the energy industry from attacks by extremists. The integrated national security enforcement team will be led by the RCMP and include officers from CSIS, the Edmonton and Calgary police forces and federal border patrol. Assistant Commissioner Gilles Michaud said the key to effectively guarding the labyrinth of oil and natural gas wells, pipelines and refineries in Alberta will be to gather intelligence to prevent attacks before they happen.

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Xtra. Nathaniel Christopher / Vancouver / Monday, June 04, 2012

Refugees’ rights advocates say a law proposed by the Harper government will increase the likelihood that gay asylum seekers will be rejected, deported or imprisoned. “C-31 is designed to make Canada quite an unattractive option for people seeking protection. And it certainly will make it very difficult for anyone, whether or not they have good grounds for protection, to have their claim fully and thoroughly assessed,” says Lesley Stalker, a former legal officer for the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees, who addressed a May 30 forum on the bill in Vancouver.

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