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OCDC Put On Legal Notice By Indigenous Prisoners

July 30, 2020

Legal Notice: “Counsel for the Criminalization and Punishment Education Project (CPEP) delivered a legal notice to the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre (OCDC) demanding the jail respects its legal responsibilities to accommodate the spiritual and cultural needs of incarcerated Indigenous persons within two weeks. The legal notice is endorsed by more than 70 civil society organizations including the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples and 6 prominent advocates for Indigenous justice. It comes only a few days after prisoners ended the second prisoner hunger strike at the provincial jail in as many months.”

By |July 30th, 2020|Sign-on Letters|

Letter to Canadian Government: Decriminalize Simple Drug Possession Immediately

May 13, 2020 | Updated June 25, 2020

Letter: The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Pivot Legal Society and the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, joined by more than 160 organizations, call on key ministers in the federal government to immediately decriminalize the possession of illicit drugs in response to the twin crises of opioid overdoses and the COVID-19 pandemic.

By |July 24th, 2020|Sign-on Letters|

Request for a UNHRC Special Session on Police Violence in the United States

June 8, 2020

Coalition Letter: endorsed by the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, and Philando Castile and over 600 rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union and U.S. Human Rights Network, demanded the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) swiftly convene a special session to investigate the escalating situation of police violence and repression of protests in the United States.

Subsequently, the UNHRC held an Urgent Debate on “the current racially inspired human rights violations, systemic racism, police brutality and the violence against peaceful protests” on June 17, 2020, which resulted in this Resolution.

By |June 27th, 2020|Sign-on Letters|

Call on Governments, Businesses, and Investors to Respond to Covid-19 Environmental and Human Rights Risks

May 14, 2020

Press Release by International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) and 30+ partner organizations. This release includes information on all three of their calls to action, which are also linked below:

Statement to Governments
Statement to the Business Community
Statement to the Investor Community

By |June 27th, 2020|Sign-on Letters|

Letter of Solidarity with the Xinka People of Guatemala

May 6, 2020

Letter: 40+ organizations call for Pan American Silver to respect the rights of the Xinka people and refrain from exerting influence over the people and government of Guatemala, despite having long-term members of its executive team serving the current administration.

By |June 26th, 2020|Sign-on Letters|

Call to Guarantee the Rights and Safety of Defenders, Social Leaders, and Communities in the Context of COVID-19 Pandemic

May 4, 2020

Letter: Earth Rights International and 100 other organizations urgently implore Daniel Andrés Palacios Martínez, Director of the Colombian National Protection Unit to guarantee human rights, environmental, and land defenders are protected in the context of the current social, economic, and health emergency.

By |June 26th, 2020|Sign-on Letters|

Webinar: Responses to Homelessness in the Time of COVID19

Tuesday, August 18, 2020 12PM EDT

Register on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_l5OIO1fuTAmSJvdI1nPyZg

Registration is Free. Recommended donation is $20.  

Please send donations to Jur-Ed Foundation ‌@ https://‌www.canadahelps.org/‌en/charities/‌jur-ed-foundation/ Donations will be applied toward legal education (including covering the costs of this webinar) and homelessness advocacy.

Lawyers who attend may use this webinar as one substantive hour towards their Continuing Professional Development requirements.

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Join Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights, Jur-Ed Foundation, and the Law Union of Ontario for a one hour webinar discussing the impact of COVID19 on homeless populations in Canada and what is being done to hold governments accountable for pandemic-related human rights violations.   

Leilani Farha, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, will discuss the recently developed National Protocol for Homeless Encampments in Canada and its potential to encourage governments to move away from criminalization and forced evictions and towards meaningful engagement with encampment residents as rights holders.   

Sanctuary Ministries’ outreach worker, Greg Cook and Goldblatt Partners lawyer, Jessica Orkin will discuss the recent lawsuit filed against the City of Toronto by a coalition of public interest groups demanding appropriate distancing and sanitation standards in shelters and a swifter, broader plan to relocate residents to vacant hotels and alternative housing.

Together these speakers and moderator Jesse Gutman, host of Jur-Ed and CLAIHR Board member, will explain the disproportionate impact of COVID19 on already vulnerable homeless people and the need for stable, long-term, and affordable housing solutions moving forward.

See below for more information on our panelists and moderator.

Leilani Farha

Former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing (June 2014 – April 2020)

Leilani brought a dynamic energy to the role of UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing; energy she will need to reach her goal of prompting and facilitating an international paradigm shift in how housing is approached.

During her time as Special Rapporteur, Leilani presented reports to the UN on homelessness, the connection between the right to housing and the right to life, and the financialization of housing. She has traveled on official missions to Serbia and Kosovo, India and most recently to Chile, amongst others, to investigate and comment on the state of the right to housing.

In addition to her requisite work, Leilani has used her platform to start The Shift, a global movement to reclaim and realize the right to housing, which calls for everyone to approach housing as a human right, not a commodity.

A lawyer by training, Leilani assumed the role of Special Rapporteur in 2014, but she has been tirelessly advocating for the realization of the right to housing throughout her career. She is the current executive director of the NGO Canada Without Poverty.

In her previous role as Executive Director of the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation, she was instrumental in launching a historic challenge to government inaction in the face of rising homelessness.

She has been a member of the Advisory Group on Forced Evictions for UN Habitat, and was a founding member of ESCR-Net, an international network of actors committed to economic, social and cultural rights.

Greg Cook

Outreach Worker, Sanctuary Ministries

Greg Cook is an Outreach Worker at Sanctuary Ministries in Toronto. Sanctuary is a healthy, welcoming community in which people who are poor and excluded are particularly valued. Sanctuary was the named plaintiff organization in the recent civil claim injunction against the City of Toronto to maintain proper social distancing in the Municipal shelter system.

Jessica Orkin

Partner, Goldblatt Partners

Jessica Orkin has a broad litigation practice including criminal, civil and administrative law matters, with an emphasis on constitutional, human rights, Aboriginal rights and access to information law matters.

Jessica appears at all levels of court, including the Court of Appeal for Ontario and the Supreme Court of Canada. She is also a frequent speaker at legal conferences and seminars. She has been named in Best Lawyers as a leading aboriginal law practitioner.

Jessica received her law degree from the University of Toronto. She also holds an M.Phil. degree in Development Studies from the University of Oxford, and a bachelor of arts and sciences from McMaster University. She was called to the Ontario Bar in 2006, after clerking at the Federal Court of Appeal.

Jesse Isaac Gutman

President, Jur-Ed Foundation and Board Member, CLAIHR

Jesse Gutman is a 2013 call Union-side Labour lawyer in Toronto, practicing in English and French. He is the President of the Jur-Ed Foundation and the host/producer of its podcast of the same name. Jesse was previously a high school teacher in Quebec and is a part-time Klezmer musician. He is passionate about human rights and international solidarity.

By |June 9th, 2020|Past Events|

Canadian Responses to the Syrian Refugee Crisis: Reflecting on the 1st Year

Join Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights and the OBA Foundation for Canadian Responses to the Syrian Refugee Crisis: Reflections on the First Year, a panel discussion and reception.

Date: Thursday, November 24, 2016
Time: 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM
Location: Ontario Bar Association, 20 Toronto Street, Toronto

Register here.

Speakers include:

Mario Calla, Executive Director, COSTI Immigrant Services 

Mario J. Calla, BA, MSW, has been the Executive Director of COSTI Immigrant Services since 1987. COSTI is a community service agency that has been providing a broad range of services to immigrants and refugees in the greater Toronto area for the past 64 years. It provides educational, social, and employment services to help all immigrants in the Toronto area attain self-sufficiency in Canadian society.  COSTI has been active in working to help bring and settle Syrian refugees.

Louis Century, Goldblatt Partners

Louis Century is an Associate at Goldblatt Partners has has helped the firm to privately sponsor a Syrian refugee family.  Before joining the firm, he clerked for Justice Richard Wagner at the Supreme Court of Canada.  Louis has held positions at the International Criminal Court working for a defence team, at the Canadian Council for Refugees as a research fellow, and at the Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights working on constitutional appeals. Louis has also conducted refugee status determinations for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Nairobi.  Louis has also recently joined an advisory group that will be exploring next steps for the Refugee Sponsorship Support Program.

Jacqueline Swaisland, Waldman & Associates

Jacqueline Swaisland is an immigration lawyer and a co-founder and the Toronto coordinator of the Refugee Sponsorship Support Program, a national program that trains lawyers to assist groups to privately sponsor refugees.  The organization has trained over 1300 lawyers in 11 cities who are committed to assisting sponsor groups to fill out private sponsorship applications for refugees for free.  In recognition of her outstanding work with refugees, she was recognized with a CARLA award by the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers.

Moderator: Marco Oved

Marco Chown Oved is a reporter on the Star’s foreign desk, with a focus on Europe and Africa.  Oved joined the Star’s city desk in 2012, covering everything from crime to politics, but has taken particular interest in stories involving abuse of power and corruption. Before joining the Star, Oved was a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press in Abidjan, Ivory Coast and worked for Radio France Internationale in Paris.

In 2014, Oved was named the R. James Travers international corresponding fellow and traveled to Burkina Faso, Ghana and Peru to investigate the links between Canadian foreign aid and mining. The resulting articles were nominated for a Canadian Association of Journalists investigative award.

By |October 19th, 2016|Past Events|

April 29, 2016: Join CLAIHR For an Evening of Theatre and Discussion

Join CLAIHR and Nightwood Theatre at the Tarragon Theatre on April 29, 2016 for an evening performance of Refuge, followed by a discussion about the play and Canada’s refugee system with CLAIHR’s Juda Strawczynski and Heather Cohen, and Refuge’s director Kelly Thornton.

CLAIHR Refuge Theatre Night April 29th

 

Tickets can be purchased here.

By |April 12th, 2016|Past Events|

Excluded from Justice? Immigration Detainees in Canada

By Petra Molnar and Stephanie J Silverman

Petra Molnar is a JD Candidate 2016, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and will be an articling fellow at the Barbara Schlifer Clinic. Stephanie J Silverman is the 2015 Bora Laskin Fellow in Human Rights Research and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Ottawa.

The migrants’ rights community was rocked by two recent deaths in the Toronto area at two separate immigration detention facilities. These deaths have been shrouded in secrecy and few details have emerged other than brief biographical sketches of the deceased. What we have learned is that the first man was found unconscious and not breathing in his cell in the Toronto East Detention Centre after an apparent suicide. Guards at the Maplehurst Correctional Facility in Milton found the second man six days later in his cell with no vital signs. Both men were awaiting deportation from Canada. An official total of 14 detainees have died while in the custody of Canadian immigration officials since 2000.

Our recent research[1] into the Canadian detention system has found a growing system of incarceration ensnaring more categories of non-citizens than ever before. International human rights law stipulates that immigration detention is a measure of last resort that is non-punitive, non-arbitrary, conducted with regard to due process, and must not sweep up asylum seekers or other vulnerable people. However, although immigration detainees in Canada are entitled to monthly reviews of the reasons for their detentions, there is no express outer time limit, and rights to habeas corpus are extremely limited.[2]

Canadian Immigration Detention System

As we explain in our article, there are three official immigration holding centres (IHCs) in Canada. The Government also subcontracts beds in medium-security provincial jails, such as the aforementioned Toronto East and Maplehurst. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) can detain a person if they suspect that: the person poses a danger to the public, are unlikely to appear for an examination, cannot prove their identity, or are part of an irregular arrival. A member of the Immigration Division (ID) of the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) reviews the grounds for detention after 48 hours, then within the next 7 days, and then every subsequent period of 30 days, as per Section 57(1) and 57(2) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The CBSA claims that 74 per cent of detainees are released within 48 hours, and that 90–95 per cent of asylum applicants are released into the community.[3] However, in 2013–2014, detainees were held on average for more than 3 weeks; as of summer 2015, 38 detainees had been held for between 1 and 2 years, 16 for anywhere between 2 and 5 years, and 4 for more than 5 years. Likewise, in summer 2014, reports showed at least 145 migrants had been detained for more than 6 months.[4]

The legal and policy construction of Canadian immigration detention is a haphazard bricolage of legislation, court rulings, informal norms, and guidance manuals that are all infused with discretion and lack of oversight. This regime has been mostly reactive with little forethought to the potentially tragic effects of this system. Prolonged periods of detention inflict lifelong psychological, physical, emotional, and social damage. Detention often exacerbates mental health issues that many detainees face, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and suicidal ideation. It is telling that there are no official screening procedures to prevent the detentions of vulnerable people, such as those with mental health issues, pregnant women, and young children.[5] For example, according to data obtained on March 31, 2016 by the Canadian Council for Refugees, there are at least 82 children in detention that are accompanying a parent as “guests.”[6]

Access to Justice in Immigration Detention

In our recent research, we also identify a series of systematic everyday obstacles that impede access to procedural justice for immigration detainees in Canada. Such obstacles include the arbitrariness of decision-making in detention reviews; the difficulty with gathering new evidence, the standard of proof for detainees, and prohibitive release conditions that collectively diminish the efficacy of monthly reviews of detention sentences; and the overlapping barriers to retaining high-quality legal counsel that include insufficient funding, geographical distancing, and informational hurdles.

A key building block to procedural justice is access to high-quality, affordable legal counsel. Although detainees have a right to be represented in their detention reviews, the government is not obligated to provide counsel. While a recent Canadian Bar Association report[7] and a 2013 Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters report both detail the difficulties facing marginalized groups of Canadians in obtaining counsel,[8] neither report addresses the plights of non-citizens, let alone those in detention. Yet, legal counsel is found to be the chief determining factor in successful detention bail hearings across national contexts. Advocates in the United States, for example, have been keen to document the deleterious consequences of appearing in immigration court without counsel.[9] The authors of the study determined that “immigrants who are represented by counsel do fare better at every stage of the court process—that is, their cases are more likely to be terminated, they are more likely to seek relief, and they are more likely to obtain the relief they seek.”[10] Similarly, in Canada, effective representation of migrants is key to protecting their rights while in detention.

The structure of detention in Canada systematically impedes access to quality legal counsel for detained migrants. These hurdles include: difficulties with gathering case-relevant evidence from detention; one-way telephone communication out from the IHCs and prisons; unjustified and discretionary transfers between detention sites; and the increasing use of video- and teleconferencing over in-person hearings. Counsel–client meetings also vary arbitrarily across detention facilities: in the Toronto IHC, a glass partition separates visitors and detainees who must rely on a patchy two-way telephone system, but at the Laval (Montreal) IHC they are allowed to mingle in the visiting room. In both provincial prisons and IHCs, access to reliable information on available legal counsel is extremely limited, and not always in a language comprehensible to the detainee. IHC detainees are particularly isolated because there is no Internet and interpreters are made available only at IRB and CBSA proceedings.

Moving Forward?

These and other issues flag ethical and legal concerns about the current state of immigration detention in Canada. There must be a broader debate about whether immigration detention can ever be just. Until that point, however, it is our responsibility to prevent further deaths and long-lasting psychological damage by improving the everyday living conditions and lowering or eliminating access to justice barriers facing detainees in Canada.

[1] Stephanie Silverman and Petra Molnar, “Everyday Injustices: Barriers to Access to Justice for Immigration Detainees in Canada,” Refugee Survey Quarterly 2016: 35 (1): 109-127, http://rsq.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/1/109.abstract

[2] See for example the recent Ontario Court of Appeal case, Chaudhary v Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness), 2015 ONCA 700 (CanLII.) holding that immigration detainees can apply to the Superior Court of Justice for habeas corpus to challenge their incarceration.

[3] UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Back to Basics: The Right to Liberty and Security of Person and ‘Alternatives to Detention’ of Refugees, Asylum-Seekers, Stateless Persons and Other Migrants, April 2011, PPLA/2011/01.Rev.1, online: http://www.refworld.org/docid/4dc935fd2.html.

[4]Nicholas Keung, “Report alleges ‘political interference’ in migrant detentions,” Toronto Star, 09 June 2014, online: http://www.thestar.com/news/immigration/2014/06/09/report_alleges_political_interference_in_migrant_detentions.html.

[5] Silverman and Molnar, supra note 1.

[6] Canadian Council for Refugees, ‘Immigration Detention Statistics 2015,” March 2016, online: http://ccrweb.ca/sites/ccrweb.ca/files/immigration-detention-statistics-2015.pdf.

[7] The Canadian Bar Association, “Reaching Equal Justice Report: An Invitation to Envision and Act,” November 2013, online: http://www.cba.org/CBA/equaljustice/secure_pdf/EqualJusticeFinalReport-eng.pdf.

[8]Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters, “Access to Civil and Family Justice: A Roadmap for Change,’ October 2013, online http://www.cfcj-fcjc.org/sites/default/files/docs/2013/AC_Report_English_Final.pdf.

[9] New York Immigrant Representation Study Report: Part II, “Accessing Justice II: A Model for Providing Counsel to New York Immigrants in Removal Proceedings,” 2011, online: http://cardozolawreview.com/content/denovo/NYIRS_ReportII.pdf.

[10] Ingrid V. Eagly and Steven Shafer, “A National Study of Access to Counsel in Immigration Court,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 2015:164(1), online: http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9502&context=penn_law_review .

By |April 4th, 2016|Blog|