(Montreal) The columnist and historian Frédéric Bastien will have finally been slowed down from the first stage in his attempt to drag Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to court for alleged violations of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA).
The Public Prosecution Service of Canada (PPSC) announced on Monday that it had closed the file “for lack of sufficient evidence”.
On January 5, Mr. Bastien, who had been a candidate for the leadership of the Parti Québécois in 2020, had submitted a private denunciation to the federal Crown in which he accused Mr. Trudeau of having violated the Act twice by his public remarks.
The famous invitation tweet
First, he argued that a tweet of January 28, 2017 was in violation of section 117 (1) of the Immigration law. This tweet from Mr. Trudeau read: “To those fleeing persecution, terror and war, know that Canada will welcome you regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength”.
Section 117(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act indicates in particular that it is prohibited to induce, assist or encourage a person or persons to enter Canada “knowing that their entry is or would be in contravention of this Act or by being unconcerned about this fact”. According to Mr. Bastien, Mr. Trudeau’s statement was an invitation to refugee claimants to cross the border irregularly, in particular via Roxham Road.
False and misleading statements
In the second case, Mr. Bastien accused the Prime Minister of having “illegally communicated false and misleading information with a view to encouraging immigration to Canada” during a speech delivered on June 12, 2022, this time contravening the Section 127(b) of the Act. The section in question states that it is prohibited “to communicate, directly or indirectly, in any medium, false or misleading information or statements with a view to encouraging or discouraging immigration to Canada”.
However, verifications by The Canadian Press show that Prime Minister Trudeau made no speech on the date specified in the information. Frédéric Bastien, however, confirmed to us that there was a date error in the information and that he was referring instead to a speech delivered on May 26, 2022, a speech during which he allegedly made four false or misleading statements, in particular in claiming that “if we closed Roxham Road, people would go elsewhere”. The other three statements concern the crossing at the Lacolle border crossing, compliance with the rules and the treatment of asylum seekers once they have entered Canada.
No “reasonable” chance of conviction
In a press release, the federal Crown indicates that, in the case of private prosecutions, “these should be taken over by the PPSC and suspended if, after examination, there is insufficient evidence or if it is not is not in the public interest to go forward”.
It adds that “in this case, the result of an objective evaluation of all the evidence establishes that there is no reasonable prospect of conviction. That is, the available evidence does not meet the threshold required by the PPSC Deskbook decision to prosecute guideline. »
In other words, the federal prosecutors concluded that Mr. Bastien had no chance of winning his case, so they preferred not to submit his information to the Court.