How Canada’s asylum border has hollowed out refugee protection
Development summary
Efrat Arbel traces how Canada’s asylum reforms between 2020 and 2026 transformed its refugee-protection system and affected its legal obligations towards asylum seekers. The analysis covers the Covid-19 border closure, the 2023 Additional Protocol to the Safe Third Country Agreement and the reforms enacted through Bill C-12 in 2026.
The article argues that the pandemic-era direct-back policy deferred protection, displaced legal responsibility and obscured the effects on racialized asylum seekers, particularly those from the Global South. Drawing on an in-depth interview with an asylum seeker, it criticises the conversion of temporary measures into permanent law and policy and calls for closer scrutiny of the legal fictions sustaining the system.