Border services must be more transparent and accountable

Yet another immigration detainee has died in unclear circumstances. It must stop.

On Oct. 30, Canada Border Services Agency issued a brief news release. A 50-year-old woman had died in a maximum-security jail in Milton.
She might as well have been “disappeared” in a dictatorship for all the detail the agency provided. As the Star’s Brendan Kennedy reported, the CBSA would not disclose the woman’s identity, country of origin or her cause of death.
We now know the woman was Teresa Michelle Gratton, a permanent resident of Canada from the United States, a mother of three sons and wife to Herb Gratton, her partner of 32 years.
We also know she was being held indefinitely in a maximum-security prison, based on the decision of one border services officer, though she did not pose a danger to anyone.
The circumstances of her imprisonment and death are unconscionable on a number of levels.
First, it is arguable that she should not have even been held at all in an immigration detention centre, never mind a maximum security jail with dangerous offenders.
Last year, in fact, Public Security Minister Ralph Goodale argued that detention in the immigration system should be a “last resort.” At that time he set aside $5 million to be spent on “alternatives,” such as the use of performance bonds, cash deposits or electronic reporting systems.
Second, we know Gratton was the 10th person to die in immigration detention in the last five years and at least the 16th since 2000. Yet because there is no civilian oversight of the CBSA, which would bring transparency through public reporting, we can’t know whether a person should have been detained in the first place, never mind hold anyone responsible for the circumstances of her death.
The CBSA will finally get civilian oversight under provisions of Bill C-59, when that proposed legislation finally makes its way through Parliament.
But in the meantime there is nothing to stop the government from ordering the agency to find alternatives to detention for anyone other than the most extreme flight risks, those that are a danger to the public or those already in jail for a crime.
At the same time, the agency should be required to release details when someone dies in custody, just as corrections officials do. Sadly, at this point Herb Gratton says he still does not know what happened. “I can’t really grieve my wife.”
Third, Teresa Gratton was deemed eligible for deportation because she had served nine months under house arrest for multiple counts of fraud under $5,000. Unbelievably, the border officer equated house arrest with a “term of imprisonment,” making her eligible for deportation.
As if to underscore the absurdity of that decision, 19 days after Gratton was detained the Supreme Court of Canada ruled it is unreasonable for immigration officials to equate conditional sentences, such as house arrest, with jail sentences.
Goodale has done much to try to fix the immigration detention system since the Trudeau government was elected. For example, in the last fiscal year Canada detained more than 6,200 people, down dramatically from the 10,088 detained in 2013-14 under the Harper government.
As well, Goodale invested $138 million last year “to transform” the system, including replacing two aging immigration detention centres and improving mental and medical health services for those being held.
Still, there is much more he could do to ensure that no one is detained unnecessarily again, or “disappeared” after dying in a jail.
The system must be made more accountable and transparent. Much can be done to achieve that even before a civilian watchdog is put in place to oversee the border services agency. It’s up to Goodale to make it happen without delay.

Editorial Board
Toronto Star
Dec 18, 2017