This was announced by the Ontario government terminate his contract with the federal government over immigrant detention, becoming the latest of several provinces to end this abusive practice.

This good news was announced as Quebec and New Brunswick also confirmed that they would terminate their migrant detention contracts with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). This decision follows the cancellation ofalbertaof British ColumbiaNova Scotia, Manitoba and some Saskatchewan.

Since the launch of the #WelcomeToCanada campaign in October 2021, eight of Canada’s ten provinces have clearly expressed their strong opposition to the use of provincial prisons to hold migrants. ” People who come to Canada to make a fresh start and start a new life deserve better than a jail cell for shelter while their paperwork is processed said Alberta’s Secretary of Public Safety Mike Ellis last January.

Ontario has the highest number of people detained by immigration authorities and incarcerated in provincial jails in the country. In February, a coroner’s examination (coroner) on the 2015 death of Abdurahman Hassan, a Somali refugee, has unearthed a number of shocking details about Canada’s immigrant detention system and the abusive conditions in Ontario’s provincial prisons.

The use of provincial prisons to detain migrants is a criminal practice that violates international human rights standards and has devastating consequences for people’s mental health. In a 2021 report, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International showed that racially motivated people, particularly black men, are being held under more restrictive conditions and for longer periods than other detainees. People with disabilities are also discriminated against throughout the immigration detention process.

A few weeks before contract terminations come into force in several federal states, the federal government announced still no solution for people currently detained in provincial prisons on grounds related solely to their immigration status. However, the CBSA has begun transferring people from Alberta prisons to British Columbia’s detention center, hundreds of miles from their families and communities.

By terminating their treaties, the eight provinces have ended their complicity in the human rights abuses committed by the federal government in connection with the detention of migrants. It’s time Prime Minister Justin Trudeau showed the same leadership.

Rather than moving people from one province to another to be held there, the federal government should invest in community alternatives to incarceration managed by local nonprofit organizations independent of the CBSA.

Canada should also immediately end the use of provincial prisons for immigrant detention in the two remaining provinces of Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland, and eventually end immigrant detention nationwide.

It’s time Canada welcomed those seeking security or a better life.