The Canadian government’s plans to use federal prisons for immigration detention has drawn the rebuke of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) as well as the ire of an international coalition of civil society groups, who have launched a petition demanding that Canada abandon the plans.
The battle over prisons
Canada is among the few countries in the developing world that continues to use prisons for immigration detention purposes, as the Global Detention Project has long noted in its reports about the country. Researchers have also documented the harmful impacts of placing immigration detainees in Canadian prisons, where they “are perceived and treated as equal to convicted offenders,” co-mingle with them, and share spaces and cells. Additionally, evidence shows that immigration detainees lack information about their rights, encounter difficulties accessing services, face restrictions on outdoor access–amounting to a mere half an hour daily–and have limited contact with their families. Several detainees’ deaths have also been recorded in Canadian prisons.
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