(Ottawa) The agreement between Ottawa and Washington aimed at closing the loophole represented by Roxham Road, used by thousands of migrants to enter Canada irregularly in order to seek asylum, will be in effect from midnight this Friday night.
This agreement, which was reached after several months of negotiations, will update the Safe Third Country Agreement. Details of the agreement will be announced after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with United States President Joe Biden this afternoon.
Essentially, the Safe Third Country Agreement will now be enforced all along the Canada-U.S. border, including at unofficial checkpoints like Roxham Road in Montérégie, where nearly 40,000 migrants had borrowed in 2022.
On both sides, these adjustments are expected to curb irregular migration.
The policy will apply to asylum seekers who are not Canadian or American citizens, and who are intercepted within 14 days of crossing the border, according to our information, which confirms those reported earlier by the Los Angeles Times.
If these people are intercepted in Canada, they will be deported to the United States, and vice versa.
The wish of the Premier of Quebec, François Legault, who loudly demanded the immediate closure of Roxham Road, is therefore likely to be granted.
“I think it’s important for Quebecers that this subject be addressed and eventually settled,” he said Thursday morning during a brief press scrum before heading to the Blue Room for the season. issues.
Calls for Roxham Road to be closed have been growing since thousands of asylum seekers resumed using it to enter Canada after the pandemic paused, when the crossing was locked down.
The Bloc Québécois had also sent a letter to the United States Ambassador to Ottawa, David Cohen, calling for the closure of Roxham Road and the suspension of this agreement.
“If the objective is achieved, which is to close Roxham and allow asylum seekers to apply on a regular basis across Canada, thus relieving the reception capacity of Quebec, at this time there, it will be a victory,” commented Bloc MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe.
“Now is that it?” We do not know. You have to be careful. The devil is in the details,” he added, wondering among other things what would happen to the $500 million investment the federal government made in Roxham Road.
Like the Bloc Québécois, the New Democratic Party called for a suspension of the agreement. “But if there’s another way to fix what’s going on, we’re open, because we have to fix that,” Chief Jagmeet Singh said in a scrum.
The leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre, spoke out on Twitter in the evening. “Trudeau backed off again and agreed to close Roxham Road, approximately 30 days after I asked him to do so,” Poilievre wrote. But he should never have opened it in the first place. Before him, there had never been illegal mass border crossings and I will not let that happen again. »
Quebec was not the only province to start tapping its feet.
In Ontario, where hundreds of asylum seekers had been transferred, elected officials insisted on the urgency for the federal government to find a solution.
“I sympathize with Premier Legault because Niagara Falls, like Quebec, has reached saturation point,” Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati said in early March.
Canada and the United States have been trying to renegotiate the Safe Third Country Agreement for several years.
Under the agreement that came into force in 2004, a person who wants to obtain refugee status must submit their request in the first of the two countries where they set foot.
As it only applies to border crossings, airports and arrivals by train, many asylum seekers use irregular passages such as Roxham Road to circumvent it.
