I’m here—I hope—to meet Anawa, a Cameroonian mother in indefinite detention, and her son, who was born in the facility. Alpha must stay with his mother at all times, even when she’s in the shower. While she carries his weight, she must also live knowing that her daughter, Tracy, not yet 10, is growing up without her in Nigeria. Anawa is imprisoned for a simple, all-too-common reason: coming here, to Canada. She hasn’t been charged with a crime and has not had a trial. She’s held because Cameroon won’t issue travel documents for deportation and Canada will not set her free for apparent fear she’ll disappear.

Anawa’s story is as much a national tragedy as it is the result of a decade of degradation in the manner in which Canada treats those people who flee oppressive circumstance in hope of refuge. A system that—over the past nine years under the federal Conservative government—has gone from bad to worse. It’s the result of policy that continually seeks to remove basic rights to those our federal government considers outsiders. It’s thanks to a persistent messaging campaign to brand people as undesirable—or worse, criminal. Today, the walls of detention centres like the one in Rexdale act to hide the mistreatment of the disenfranchised and promote a culture of fear. A culture that often prevents the mistreated from speaking about their experiences with the media, or anyone.

So I wait.

IT’S A STICKY DAY in early May, and I’m sitting in a slowlyfilling courtroom at the Ontario Court of Appeals. I’m here to watch as the End Immigration Detention Network (EIDN) and a team of lawyers appeal a ruling denying habeas corpus to immigrants in detention. Basically, they want the court to prove that indefinite detention is justified. Even for the experts, the legal framework proves difficult to navigate. “I don’t know every section [of immigration code] anymore,” one of Anawa’s lawyers tells the court. “I used to know it all, but it’s been amended so much I just can’t keep up.”

IF THERE’S BEEN one constant since Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party came to power, it’s change. Policy has changed rapidly and seemingly at random, with the consistent misdirection acting as an obstacle for immigration lawyers and experts. “Every month is a change,” says Loly Rico, the president of the Canadian Council for Refugees, “and every month is a cut.”

In nearly a decade of conservative power, Canada has gained an abysmal record in caring for those seeking asylum—the most egregious of which is arguably our country’s new and unusual habit of indefinitely detaining refugee and immigration claimants without providing any documentation as to why. In fact, in July the United Nations Human Rights Commission Report chastised Canada for this very practice.

Take Anawa’s case. Facing female genital mutilation, she fled Cameroon to Finland, then to the U.K. and, eventually, to Canada. By that time, she was pregnant with Alpha. Lacking official documentation and identification, upon arrival she was put in the detention centre where she and Alpha now live. She has no release date.

Laced through the policy upheaval is also a shift in the tone in which Canada speaks about refugees. This government is openly hostile, introducing terms like “bogus claimants” and “abusing our generosity” to the public lexicon. Rico, once a refugee herself, says “[Refugees] are not coming because of what we have. They’re coming because they need protection.” Syed Hussan of the EIDN echoes that statement: “The idea that Canada, or any international agency, gets to decide who is and who is not worthy of safety is absurd.”

Stripping a claimant’s humanity with such language allows abuses of power to slip by—and become a norm. Anawa’s lawyer, Swathi Sekhari, worries whenever a client speaks to the media. “The [Canadian Border Services Agency] can be quite subversive with their actions,” she says, “I would say even violent.” Guards can punish detainees for speaking out—either in the yard with verbal abuse or, at times, in detention reviews. “All of a sudden you can be declared as being uncooperative,” she adds.

MANY TYPES OF IMMIGRATION have felt the effects of structural decay—including migrant workers and caregivers. Hussan, who’s also with the organization No One Is Illegal, says that to focus on one stream or another is to confuse the problem. “People are just people trying to move,” he says. When people are fleeing oppression their only concern is getting out, and they will choose the path they think is most likely to help. Each stream has its own pitfalls. Migrant workers, for example, don’t have their housing covered under workplace safety laws even though they’re forced to live where they work.

I’M STARTING TO REALIZE I won’t get to speak to Anawa. It’s my third time visiting the detention centre—a place that, in anything but name, is a prison. While I sit on this side of the glass, she’s being herded back from lunch where Alpha may have been playing with a new friend. He has to make new friends a lot. Most of them move out eventually, into a world he doesn’t understand. Each time I’ve gone I’ve seen her warm, welcoming face and his unbridled pent-up energy as he bounds around the visitation area. She corrals him as she tells me she can’t talk. Not today. I’ve been waiting a while, but at least I get to drive home after. For the time being, she’s already there.

Later, in 2010, Harper’s position softened, but only slightly. Amidst public pressure, particularly from aboriginal leaders, Canada signed a letter of support for the declaration— even though the government remained wary of its contents. This fact was reiterated in 2014 when Canada was the only country to raise objections over the declaration’s outcome document, meant to provide a framework for countries to follow and set minimum rights standards. The feds said they worried the document could provide “veto” power to aboriginal groups, despite the fact that the word veto isn’t even used in the document. Equally disappointing, it also called the agreement an “aspirational” document, suggesting it wasn’t achievable—or, at least, that the government had no concrete plans to do so.

Perhaps such sentiments shouldn’t come as a surprise. Under Harper, the federal government has also consistently chosen industry over aboriginal interest (see: the much-protested Northern Gateway Pipeline, for example); eliminated First Nation Band and Tribal Council funding for advisory services, limiting the ability of councils to assess and analyze government legislation; drastically cut funding for First Nation political organizations; completely ignored pressing aboriginal issues such as the emergency state of Canada’s murdered and missing women; and missed meaningful opportunities for change, such as it did with its bungled communications (or rather lack thereof) with members of Idle No More, one of the most significant protest movements in Canada’s history.

No wonder, then, that in 2013 when James Anaya, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Aboriginal Peoples, visited Canada, he declared that we are facing a “crisis” when it comes to aboriginal rights. “Amidst this wealth and prosperity,” he said, “Aboriginal people live in conditions akin to those in countries that rank much lower and in which poverty abounds.” Not much has changed since—but, by now, such a change is long overdue.

When the Conservative government rushed to pass the bill into law last year, Justice Minister Peter MacKay repeatedly told media outlets that the government considers sex workers as victims in need of saving. Workers are not breaking any laws by selling sex, however it is illegal for someone to purchase it. Prohibitions are also against activities involved in the sex trade, like a client communicating with the intention of buying sex or advertising the sale of someone else’s sex trade services.

It is also illegal for establishments like massage parlours or escort services to sell sex. It is legal to be a sex worker, thought it is near impossible to legally work. The government believes it’s simply trying to deter people from entering sex work. But Johns scared of legal punishment are more likely to be anxious and, as a result, aggressive. This means sex workers have less time to clearly communicate terms; there is not enough time to adequately screen. It doesn’t help that it’s also illegal for sex workers to work together—further lessening safety. A year old in November, the new legislation has already done a lot of damage, particularly amongst those it is supposedly trying to save.

After raiding 20 Ottawa massage and body rub parlours late last April, police detained 11 women. These women will be deported, and this trend is likely to continue. If our federal government is so interested in saving sex workers, why would they put them through the trauma of Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) inspections, before sending them back to possibly more abusive situations? “Migrant sex workers are often the target of robbery and assault. They are afraid to report to police or seek help because they do not want to be deported,” Elene Lam of Butterfly—Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network told media in May. “Investigations under the guise of trafficking and police raids make the situation even worse. It makes people hide further underground, and makes them more vulnerable to violence and endangers their safety.”

Not that things are much safer in Stephen Harper’s Canada. Indigenous women in sex work operate in a nation where Indigenous people are over-represented in
prisons, and colonialism has normalized violence against Indigenous women. This oppression is only amplified when these women are in sex work, as is shown with the abductions and murders of Indigenous women, mostly sex workers, in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side. This violence is so frequent British Columbia’s Highway 16 is called the Highway of Tears. “Native women are not afforded the same level of agency as everyone else,” Indigenous feminists and activists Naomi Sayers and Sarah Hunt wrote last January for The Globe and Mail. “They are merely passive bodies waiting to be violated.” Sayers and Hunt continue to say they have no faith that the Canadian justice system will protect them, when it is clear that they have a better chance of being arrested.

Take the recent case of Cindy Gladue, which has set a dismal, unfortunate precedent for dehumanizing court evidence. An Indigenous woman and a sex worker, she was killed four years ago in an Edmonton motel room. When her body was found, authorities discovered an 11 cm wound in the 36-year-old mother’s vagina. It appears to be caused by a sharp object, but Bradley Barton, Gladue’s alleged murderer, told the courts that his fingers caused the wounds during rough consensual sex. The victim’s actual vagina was brought to court as evidence. It was a move many see as a complete disregard for her life, as well as the female body.

This was also done before a jury that had only two women on it and did not include a single Indigenous person. Barton was initially found not guilty. Thankfully, protests arose across the country. It was announced during these rallies on April 2 that Barton’s acquittal was appealed. Good news, but the message had already been sent: In Canada, Indigenous women, especially those working as sex workers, are not seen as human. As Harper told Peter Mansbridge during a December 2014 interview on CBC, these women are not high on the Conservative radar.

The government is pushing their morals onto others, to the extent of endangering lives. Maybe, they should have attended the solidarity rally in June where the voices of sex workers could be heard loudly, demanding rights, not rescue. Certainly, I would have shared my markers.

Yet, at the same time, rights on paper don’t always translate into lived rights. And, despite our reputation as a supposed LGBTQ leader, Canada itself is still missing important on-paper rights. Over the past nine years, our federal government’s actions when it comes to LBGTQ rights have been inconsistent—even confounding.

Here in Canada, for instance, queer youth are grossly misrepresented amongst the homeless population, accounting for 25–40 percent. Members of the federal Conservative Party have also actively blocked the advancement of trans rights at home with endless delays of Bill C-279, which seeks to give transgender people basic Charter protections. The back-and-forth doesn’t stop there: The feds cut funding to gay organizations, such as the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network in 2012 and Pride Toronto in 2010—yet a 600-person gay Conservative party called Fabulous Blue Tent was thrown in 2011 to bring gay Conservatives together during the Party’s convention. That same weekend, the Tories passed a resolution supporting religious organizations’ refusal to perform same-sex marriages. Previously, in 2005, Harper had campaigned on the promise to repeal same-sex marriage.

And, it doesn’t stop there. Here, we examine the Conservatives sad, confusing track record:

TRANS RIGHTS
Within the Conservative Party, there are LGBTQsupportive caucus members, but they are in the minority, despite the now-biennial Fabulous Blue Tent party. When Bill C-279—to grant transgender Canadians equal protection under the law—passed through the House of Commons, only 18 of 155 Tory MPs voted in favour. Conservative MP Rob Anders called it a “bathroom bill,” insisting its goal was to give creepy men access to women’s washrooms. All other party MPs who voted were unanimously in support of C-279.

The bill is currently sitting in the Conservative-dominated Senate, and will almost surely be killed at election time—having to retrace its process through the House again. Now more than 10 years in the making, this would be the second time the bill was forced back to square one. Yet, if passed, it will give trans people legal recourse against things such as being fired and being denied housing, and will also make sky-high rates of violence punishable as hate crimes.

HARPER TRIES TO MOVE BACKWARDS
Opposing queer rights is nothing new for Harper. Early on in 1994, he fought plans to introduce same-sex spousal benefits in Canada. In 2005, after same-sex marriage was legalized, he promised to bring legislation defining marriage as “the union of one man and one woman.” When this plan was defeated shortly after his election, he decided to leave the issue alone, saying, “I don’t see reopening this question [of marriage] in the future.”

FUNDING CUTS
After more than 20 years of federal funding, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network faced cuts in 2012 because it “may have used the funds for advocacy.” After receiving a “significant portion of its funding from Ottawa” over its entire existence, the organization sought renewal of the same funding but the Public Health Agency of Canada rejected 16 of its 20 proposals.

In 2006, shortly after taking power, the Conservative Party also cut the entire budget of a program called Court Challenges, which had made public funds available for individuals launching human rights challenges in court. Used by those making challenges on the basis of sexual orientation and more, the fund had helped homosexual couples secure spousal benefits and achieve equality protection. Harper’s chief of staff from 2005-2008, Ian Brodie, used his PhD to argue the program unfairly empowered homosexuals and other minority groups. The Conservatives had killed the program in 1992 originally, only to have it revived by the Liberals. Now the Cons have resuscitated it, but with a narrowed focus on only linguistic minorities.

PROGRESS, PR, OR SOMETHING ELSE?
Canada’s immigration office under Harper worked with Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees to fast-track 100 gay Iranians into Canada, saving them from possible execution. Harper also personally lobbied Uganda’s president in 2009 over a law that would imprison gay people for life. Canada even gave $200,000 to Ugandan groups to fight the law. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has made repeated international public statements condemning countries that criminalize homosexuality, and during the 2014 Olympics Baird and Harper spoke out against the Russian “gay propaganda” law that makes it illegal for anyone to distribute gay rights materials.

Yet, speaking against the criminalization of LGBTQ people is not the same as active support. In regards to Russia in particular, Ontario Conservative MP Scott Reid, who chairs the Commons’ subcommittee on international human rights, said it’s an issue of freedom of speech. Saskatchewan Conservative backbencher Maurice Vellacott said he believes LGBTQ folks should have basic protections, but that he wouldn’t want his kids exposed to “homosexual propaganda.” These attitudes offer insight into the mixed messages of the Conservative Party when it comes to queer rights. Whatever its motives are for this dissonance, the fact remains there’s a lot of work to be done in this country before queer liberation becomes a reality.

Also problematic: In 2010, when the Conservatives cut the long-form census, they also nixed the Participation and Activity Limitation Survey, better known by its acronym, PALS—those who received the survey were the same people who, on their census form, said they had a disability. PALS was used to track the needs of Canadians with disabilities, and looked at everything from rates of poverty, violence and abuse, to quality of housing, education and employment, and participation in community and civic activities. From there, government, but also more importantly advocacy groups, could use the data to better determine needed supports. The government has since introduced the Canadian Survey on Disability, but acknowledges that its data sets can’t be compared to PALS because of different questions and, notably, a different definition of the actual term “disability”—stunting a body of research. The new survey also received fewer responses, which advocates feared.

Perhaps that data could have been used to help the government figure out how to spend the near $40-million budget for the Opportunities Fund, a fund designed to help those prepare for, maintain or find employment. Unfortunately, in 2013-2014, the government failed to allocate one-quarter of its funding—undermining yet another promising initiative for those with disabilities.