Canada’s top court upholds ‘Safe Third Country' refugee agreement

OTTAWA, Ont. — Canada’s top court upheld the Safe Third Country Agreement, delivering a win for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government despite the law’s severe restrictions on a person's ability to claim refugee status in Canada.

Refugee advocates, human rights groups and the left-wing New Democratic Party have long called for the nearly two-decade old Canada-U.S. pact to be scrapped.

The Federal Court found the law to be unconstitutional in 2020 for violating their right to life, liberty and security since they are deflected back to the U.S. and wind up in detention, sometimes under solitary confinement or inhumane conditions, and can face deportation to the countries they are fleeing.

But the Trudeau government appealed and it made its way to Canada’s Supreme Court.

The pact sets out that claimants must file in the first “safe” country they arrive in, allowing the country to turn asylum seekers back from Canada-U.S. border checkpoints.

But many have gotten around it by entering Canada through unofficial crossings, where they can claim asylum once they are caught by authorities. Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden negotiated an update to the agreement during their bilateral meeting in March to address that.

Speaking ahead of the ruling, Christina Clark-Kazak, associate professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa, said an outcome like this would help Trudeau to solidify his political position on the agreement.

It could lend the government the “traction” and the credibility that it “sorely needs” after it invested “a lot of political capital” into keeping the agreement alive through legal appeals and a lengthy process of revising it with the U.S.