Briefing Notes: COUNTER-, MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES, POLICING AND ’S APPROACH TO HUMAN RIGHTS

Produced by: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL CANADA (ENGLISH) I. Counter -Terrorism

- Complicity in torture: Serious concerns have been raised about the complicity of Canadian officials in the torture of Canadian nationals abroad, such as , Abousfian Abdelrazik, , Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin. - Use of information acquired through torture: Canadian security agencies are instructed to use as evidence foreign information that could have been obtained by torture. - Security certificates: The security certificate scheme raises serious concerns about internationally recognized procedural fairness rights, such as a person’s right to know the case against him or her. - Repatriation of Omar Khadr: In 2012 Omar Khadr was transferred to a Canadian prison, almost one year after he had become eligible for transfer further to a plea agreement. He has not been provided redress for the human rights violations he experienced at the hands of US and Canadian officials.

II . Migrants and Refugees

- Right to equal treatment: New legislation authorizes the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to designate a country as a “safe” country of origin (DCO), and impose discriminatory limitations on the rights of refugee claimants from that country, such as drastically reduced deadlines. The legislation also permits certain refugee claimants to be classified as “irregular arrivals,” making them subject to various sanctions, including mandatory and unreviewable detention for a minimum of 12 months. - Right to health: Under this legislation, refugee claimants from DCOs will be denied access to virtually any health coverage, and will only receive coverage if they pose a risk to public health or public safety. - Non-refoulement : Legal provisions that were held to be in breach of the obligatory international norm of non-refoulement (which prohibits deportation to torture) have yet to be revoked.

III . - Policing

- Vulnerability : The Temporary Foreign Worker Program is riddled with major gaps in legal protection, such as the absence of an employer-monitoring system, allowing for a high risk of abuse. - Use of CEDs : The Canadian government’s guidelines pertaining to the use of Conducted Energy Devices, such as TASERS, do not adopt an acceptable threshold of harm. - G8/G20 Summits: Despite an unprecedented number of arrests, allegations of abuse at the hands of police, and inhuman prison conditions in the temporary detention centres during the Toronto G8/G20 Summits, federal and provincial governments have rejected calls for a public inquiry. - Student protests in Québec: Civil society has raised concerns about the emergency law enacted by the Québec legislature (Bill 78). There have been allegations of use of excessive force by the police in response to the protests, and serious breaches of the right to freedom of assembly. - Mistreatment of journalists: Incidents suggest that some police officers are not adequately trained in terms of their obligation to respect the rights of journalists at demonstrations.

IV. Trade and Business

- Trade agreements and human rights: The government has refused to carry out independent impact assessments of its trade agreements, which is of particular concern in the recent FTA with Colombia, the recent FIPA with China and the negotiations for the Canada/Honduras FTA. - Refusal to adopt corporate responsibility standards: Canada has refused to adopt binding standards of corporate accountability for overseas human rights violations committed by Canadian companies. Canada is home to some 75% of the world’s mining and exploration companies.

Briefing Notes: COUNTER-TERRORISM, MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES, POLICING AND CANADA’S APPROACH TO HUMAN RIGHTS

V. International Obligations

- Delays in ratifying human rights treaties: Canada has not lived up to its commitment to consider ratifying a number of key international treaties, such as the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture; the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; and the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers . - Lack of implementation: Canada has yet to develop a plan for implementing the international obligations stemming from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. - The Charter: Canadian authorities refuse to give extraterritorial effect to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, despite it being the means of fulfilling Canada’s international human rights obligations. - Convention on Cluster Munitions: The legislation designed to implement the Convention on Cluster Munitions has major shortcomings, such has the failure to prohibit investment in the production of these weapons, and ambiguous provisions relating to joint military operations with states not party. - Disdain for UN monitoring system : Canada has shown contempt for a number of international officials visiting the country, such as the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food; the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, for comments made about housing conditions on the Attawapiskat First Nations reserve in December 2011; the Committee against Torture, for carrying out its treaty-mandated review of Canada’s record in May 2012; and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, for expressing concerns about Québec’s emergency legislation in May 2012.

V I. Recommendations

Civil Society calls on the government of Canada to:

With regards to counter-terrorism, - Implement past recommendations for review and oversight of national security activities, - Reforms the immigration security certificate system to meet fair trial standards, - Ensure redress for victims of Canadian anti-terrorism practices.

With regards to migrants and refugees, - Repeal the provisions on mandatory detention of designated foreign nationals, - Entitle all refugee claimants to a fair and equitable procedure, in line with principles of fundamental justice - Ensure adequate healthcare for all refugee claimants - Provide absolute protection against refoulement to torture

With regards to policing - Amend the guidelines for the use of CEDs to require that their use will be confined to strict necessity when there is an imminent threat of death or injury, - Ensure a public inquiry into the actions and role of all parties involved in the G8/G20 Summits, - Ask for the withdrawal of the Quebec emergency laws, and ask for a public inquiry into the policing of the Quebec student protests, - Ensure adequate training for police forces with regards to freedom of press, especially in the context of demonstrations.

With regards to trade and business and international obligations: - Ensure an independent human rights impact assessment of trade and investment treaties before they are ratified. - Adopt corporate social responsibility standards, especially in the extracting sector, - Ratify the international human rights document it previously pledged to adhere to, - Develop a binding and functioning implementation system for international obligations and recommendations in the form a Human Rights Implementation Act.

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