Incredible, this Canada-US agreement on the closure of Roxham Road.
We understand that several details remain to be defined. Where, precisely, the Devil hides…
It appears that the Safe Third Country Agreement of 2004 will now be applied across the border. There is no doubt that Quebec, through its geography, will remain an important gateway for asylum seekers.
Challenge
The current global migration crisis is challenging the Canadian model in these matters: our government has long been content to simply select its refugees from camps all over the world. It received relatively few at its borders.
The post-Roxham era will not bring us back to this “comfortable” era. Refugees will continue to arrive.
We have had some “waves” in the past. In Quebec, the so-called “boat people”, in the 1970s, were welcomed, among others, thanks to Jacques Couture, Minister of Immigration to René Lévesque. There were also the Haitians, in the early 1980s. (Humans, who, by the way, thanks to the policies put in place at the time, were able to become proud Quebecers.)
However, compared to what other countries have had to face, these experiences represent ripples.
The German case
Germany, for example, in 2014 and 2015 alone received 1.2 million asylum applications.
The Federal Republic had also experienced a similar influx in the early 1990s, recall the authors Jennifer Elrick and Daniel Béland, in a very interesting text of the review Policy options (“The Roxham Road and the Lessons of Germany”, March 15).
According to them, Canada could draw inspiration from several aspects of the refugee reception system implemented in the German federation.
In particular a “redistribution of refugees” between the 16 Länder (equivalent to the provinces) which is done “according to the tax revenues and the population of each State”. Those that are more ‘populous’ and ‘economically powerful’ are allocated proportionately more applicants than those with ‘fewer inhabitants and smaller economies’.
A key “
A redistribution formula was defined decades ago, the Königstein Key (Königsteiner Schlüssel). At the QUB microphone on Thursday, Daniel Béland, director of the McGill Institute for Canadian Studies, compared it to that of Canadian equalization, “less complicated”!
According to Béland, if such a program of distribution were instituted in our Dominion, according to related principles, Alberta should receive more applicants.
Technology is also involved. As soon as an applicant files an application, no matter where, “an electronic system automatically determines the state that will process his file, and he is sent there immediately (at the expense of the first state where he arrives)”.
Obviously, no system is perfect: would our charters, as interpreted by the courts, accept the restrictions on freedom of movement induced by this type of system? The linguistic imperatives of Quebec would also complicate things, most likely.
There is no doubt, however, that a careful examination of what is being done in one of the most populous countries in Europe would be beneficial in several respects, in the post-Roxham period which is about to begin.