Jamie Sarkonak: Committing a crime should guarantee deportation

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The most egregious excuse-making for Forde happened under a Conservative federal government. It was Conservatives who were in charge of the immigration laws at the time, and Conservatives who elevated into immigration tribunal management the woman who would go on to allow an alleged child rapist to stay in Canada. (Though to their credit, it was also the Conservatives who appointed the judge who rejected Forde’s final pleas to remain in Canada: former federal court chief justice Paul Crampton, who retired last month.)

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This remains the status quo under the Liberals. Judges and immigration adjudicators continue to stay deportations of all sorts of permanent resident criminals on the off chance that they’ll stop abusing the privilege of living in Canada.

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In June immigration appeal adjudicator Harold Shepherd (appointed in 2022) paused the deportation of Fiji national Ricky Ravikash Lal, 43, whose long criminal record runs from 2006 to 2020 and includes obstructing police, impaired driving, ignoring court orders, mischief over $5,000 and possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose.

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Though Lal’s probability of rehabilitation was considered low, and though he “has not demonstrated a settled desire to overcome his issues and rehabilitate himself to the extent that he no longer poses a risk to the public or of reoffending,” the adjudicator decided to give him another three years here to turn things around.

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In August, immigration appeal adjudicator Catherine Gaudet (appointed 2022) paused the deportation of Trinidad and Tobago national Avinash Ryan Persaud, 22, who has been convicted of robbery 13 times since 2018. During these proceedings, he was charged with another 30 counts involving drugs and weapons. What remorse he has shown has been superficial. But the adjudicator believed in the faint hope that mental health treatment, which Persaud had never seriously pursued, could turn his life around.

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And earlier in November, 42-year-old Philippine national Jaques Delgado Lazaro, who was convicted of “several criminal offences” in 2021 and was in the news for ramming a Toronto police cruiser while breaching bail in 2023, was fortunate enough to have his deportation paused by Federal Court Justice John Norris.

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Lazaro was in the middle of fighting the results of his removal risk assessment (another means for criminals to delay and sometimes prevent removal) and argued that deportation would unfairly disrupt those court proceedings. His argument was that returning to the Philippines would put him at risk of relapsing into addiction and thus greater harm, as drug users are treated harshly in his home country.

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Under the current system, the mental health of a foreign perpetual criminal is more important than the physical safety of Canadians and the preservation of an ordered, high-trust society. This can’t continue. We need immigration laws that guarantee the swift removal of non-citizens convicted under the Criminal Code from Canada. No judicial stays, no excuses. And in the rare circumstances where it’s established that deportation to one’s home country will result in grievous physical harm, they should be deported elsewhere.

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Canada is already above capacity. We don’t need more child rapists and robbers from abroad competing for limited apartments and jobs, let alone drunk drivers, small-time fraudsters and mischief-makers.

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National Post

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