On October 10, the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR) and ICLMG asked the Supreme Court of Canada to rule that it is fundamentally unfair to rely on secret evidence in deciding whether to deport a non-citizen, potentially to a risk of persecution. The CCR and ICLMG were jointly intervening in the Harkat case, which addresses the use of undisclosed evidence in the security certificate process. The organizations, represented by Sharry Aiken, Barbara Jackman and Andrew Brouwer, presented oral arguments yesterday.

The CCR/ICLMG factum is available from the Supreme Court website.

Treating people fairly means giving everyone equal protection of their basic rights. The use of secret evidence in immigration processes is unfair because it undermines non-citizens’ right to life, liberty and security of the person. When these rights are at stake for citizens, such as in criminal proceedings, we do not tolerate the use of secret evidence. Non-citizens deserve an equal opportunity to know and respond to the evidence used against them.

Decisions made using secret evidence in immigration proceedings have dramatic consequences for the individual, because a person found inadmissible on security grounds cannot make a refugee claim and is only eligible for a much narrower risk review, with a higher standard of proof. There is therefore a real possibility that affected persons will be sent back to face persecution, in violation of Canada’s international human rights obligations. Because the definition of security inadmissibility in Canadian immigration law is very broad, those affected include people who have never engaged in or promoted violence and who represent no threat to Canada’s security.

The CCR/ICLMG factum is available from the Supreme Court website.

Canadians should heed the uproar in the United States, Europe and Latin America over the recent revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) is spying, without warrants, on e-mails, faxes and telephone calls going into and out of or simply transiting through the country. The fear is that data collection and data-mining systems used by the NSA are not just monitoring suspected terrorists, but also filtering through the international, and possibly even domestic, communications of potentially all ordinary law-abiding citizens. What is even more startling is that Canadian security agencies have been authorized to do the same thing here, and may be using the same approach to conduct vast data-mining of our communications.