Asylum


Last week the House of Commons adopted a report from one of its committees, Citizenship and Immigration, that recommended Canada give immediate refugee status to deserters from the US military, much as we once did during the Vietnam War. At least that was the intention of the majority of the committee members, and their supporters in the House, the three opposition parties.

I think however, they may actually have made it harder for Iraq war resisters to claim to be conscientious objectors.

The United States no longer has a draft; all of their military personnel are volunteers, just like Canada's. There are about 200 US deserters here right now. While some may have become pacifists, others are only opposed to participating in the Iraq war. The US now has a process for enlisted troops to claim CO status, these people have chosen instead to go into exile. Their applications to stay here have not been going well however, as refugee review boards and appeals courts have turned down a number of them.

Back in December, when Olivia Chow (NDP) first proposed her motion, it read something like this:
The committee recommends that the government immediately implement a program to allow conscientious objectors and their immediate family members (partners and dependents), who have refused or left military service related to the war in Iraq and do not have a criminal record, apply for permanent resident status and remain in Canada; and that the government should immediately cease any removal or deportation actions that may have already commenced against such individuals.

The committee held hearings on the topic of Iraq War Resistors. One anti-war activist testified that the war was illegal; the Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan, had said so himself in 2004. This led Jim Karygiannis (Liberal) to suggest an amendment, replacing the words "related to the war in Iraq" with "related to a war not sanctioned by the United Nations." And that's what the committee decided.

No one seems to have noticed the problem with this, even though almost six months elapsed before the Commons took up the report.

Then Mark Collins, at The Torch on Sunday, and again today in the Ottawa Citizen, pointed out that the US and Coalition forces in Iraq have been operating under a UN mandate ever since Oct. 16, 2003.

Collins was not impressed that no member of the government raised this issue. Instead the Conservatives argued only that the courts, up to the Supreme Court, had found the refugee application process to be open to conscientious objectors, and that those deserters who have been denied lost on the merits of their individual cases.

Back in December Conservative Bradley Trost did ask the committee to consider the implications for Canadian soldiers who have served in wars not sanctioned by the UN. Karygiannis assured him there were none. This surprised me, since I thought Canada was involved in Kosovo.

Trost also had these comments to make, in response to a Mennonite delegation.

I very much appreciate the witnesses' remarks today. I particularly understand where Mr. Janzen is coming from, because some of those 21,000 Mennonites included my Great Grandpa Dyck, a conscientious objector who served in the medical corps of the Russian army, as did my great uncle, Peter Dyck, who served in the medical corps of the Canadian army. He volunteered as a conscientious objector.

So I have very strong feelings about it. But I want to make a couple points here, and maybe the witnesses could respond. While I continue to support the whole concept of conscientious objection, one of the things I always find problematic is when people object to specific wars and not to war overall or war in general. That's not a problem for Mr. Janzen, but I want to put that out.

I did appreciate the gentleman's remarks about pushing for alternative service, because I have absolutely no respect for anyone who volunteered to serve and then, even if they did have a conscientious change, were not willing to provide alternative service. As I said, my Great Uncle Pete volunteered to do body recovery in World War II. He wasn't drafted by the Canadian military; he volunteered, and he took the toughest of tough assignments.

Third, the other thing I appreciate from my Mennonite history is that we Mennonites have always been willing to take the consequences of our religious faith, wherever it was. The Catholics, the Protestants, the Dutch Reformed, the Lutherans, they all killed us for what we stood for—for our objections.

Those three elements are the minimum requirements for conscientious objection that I would respect. But without those elements, I have a hard time accepting where people really come from.


Collins might be right that the Conservatives missed an obvious rebuttal. Or maybe this is an example of the Prime Minister taking advantage of naiveté of the opposition. The adopted report would appear to limit the numbers of deserters eligible for special consideration to a handful, those who left between March and October of 2003.

The report itself only has moral value, it's an opinion of the House, not law. Whether it has any influence, one way or the other, is entirely up to the refugee boards, the courts, and the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.


Posted: Tue - June 10, 2008 at 05:19 PM          

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