I spent the last few days reaching out to advocates, experts and the government about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new border bill, Bill C-2.
What I learned was…not reassuring.
Migrant Rights Network, an alliance of several groups advocating for migrant justice, is sounding the alarm. So are two separate civil liberties groups, who are warning that the bill could be used to trample on the rights of both Canadians and people immigrating to Canada.
Bill C-2 is “a massive, massive expansion of authoritarian powers,” Syed Hussan, a spokesperson for the Migrant Rights Network, warned me in a phone call.
He decried the legislation as “trump-style tactics and antics.”
A civil liberties monitoring group warned Bill C-2 could “allow for the mass cancelation or suspension of the processing of individuals from certain countries, or under certain kinds of visas or immigration documents, etc., similar to what we have seen in the US.”
The bill appears to “propose significant changes to laws that protect core rights and liberties, including protections for refugees, limits on police investigative powers, and privacy protections for mail and personal data,” the Canadian Civil Liberties Association told me.
Even if you trust Carney not to abuse these powers — and that’s a big “if” — you should consider whether you’re comfortable with these powers ending up in the hands of a Conservative government in the future.
I’ll break down all that and more in today’s video.
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