In the News July 15
Status for All!
Federal Court Rejects Mamadou Konaté’s Application for Judicial Review
Mamadou Konaté speaks at a vigil on June 27, 2022.
Mamadou Konaté, a foreign national originally from the Ivory Coast, was summoned to the offices of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) on June 27, without being told why. This is usually very disconcerting for him, as there is always the chance that he be detained pending deportation, particularly given the fact that on June 8, a Federal Court judge rejected his application for judicial review, one of the last legal means available to him. The judge’s decision cannot be appealed.
Mamadou has been living in Quebec since 2016 and had applied for judicial review in the hopes of having the Minister of Public Security review his file, after being determined inadmissible to Canada. He argues that his life is in danger if he is returned to his home country.
Just prior to his appearance on June 8, a rally was organized outside the offices of the CBSA in his support. Then, during his appointment with the CBSA, he was asked to sign a form that will be used to obtain a travel document for the Ivory Coast Embassy, bringing him that much closer to being deported.
At the rally, his lawyer Stewart Istvanffy, explained that Konaté’s application for judicial review was made in the hopes of having his inadmissibility to Canada lifted.
“The reason they say he is inadmissible was because he was a member of one of the two groups in the civil war in Ivory Coast and where he lived, it was like the people that he joined were the people who were the government, and he was never convicted of a crime, he never held a gun, he was never involved in anything seriously wrong. He’s being excluded only because of his membership. So it’s guilt by association, something that is really illegal in our law, in common law, in our legal traditions and we shouldn’t have in immigration law either.”
His lawyer has also affirmed that in the past, based on Canadian law, Nelson Mandela himself would have been rejected by Canadian authorities.
“When I say that he is being excluded only because of his membership, this violates really clearly Article 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which says that we have the right to free association, and he’s being rejected because of his associates, not because of anything that he actually did. It’s just crazy.” Istvanffy added that “there’s hundreds of people in his situation in Canada, decent people who are working hard, who can’t get status because we have such a severe and repressive inadmissibility provision in our law.”
Before coming to Quebec, Konaté was a refugee in Nigeria and in Liberia.
He has been placed in detention on three different occasions, for months at a time. His friends and supporters assisted him in raising $7,000 for his release the last time around and he continues to work long hours to pay his legal fees.
Close to 45,000 people have signed petitions requesting that Mamadou Konaté be allowed to remain here.
Two members of parliament, one at the federal level and the other in Quebec’s National Assembly, have seen fit to go to bat for him.
On April 13, 2021, Alexandre Boulerice, NDP Member of Parliament (MP) for Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, tabled a petition signed by 1,432 persons calling on the Trudeau government to lift the deportation order against Mamadou and to grant him a work permit and a temporary resident permit pending the granting of permanent residence.
Four months earlier on December 10, 2020, on the occasion of International Human Rights Day, Member of the Quebec National Assembly (MNA) for Laurier-Dorion, Andrés Fontecilla, presented an excerpt of a petition signed by 1,900 people, calling on then-Immigration Minister Nadine Girault to avail herself of her power under the Québec Immigration Regulation to select a foreign national residing in Quebec and, based on humanitarian considerations, accord him a Quebec selection certificate. Section 62 of the Regulation confers upon the Minister the power to select a foreign national in a special hardship situation.
In addition, close to 41,000 have signed a petition on change.org informing that he has been recognized as a refugee by the Red Cross, as well as the United Nations, during his last incarceration while awaiting deportation and that his situation as well as that of others should be regularized through a special program.
Mamadou has never had any difficulty in having his work permit renewed by the federal government. This means that from the government’s perspective, he is trustworthy enough to work in essential services, the health care system where he contracted COVID-19, in warehouses as well as for Hydro-Québec in felling trees. In other words, he is good enough to work but not enough to seek protection and the defence of his basic rights through permanent residency.
This and other injustices committed against vulnerable people seeking aslyum in Canada make the case for the need for a truly humanitarian immigration policy. Now is the time to unite and fight for it, so that all are afforded justice and compassion.
(Photos: Solidarité pour Mamadou)
Workers’ Forum, posted July 15, 2022.
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