Desperate to stop the government from denying health care to refugee claimants, doctors and lawyers launch charter challenge.
ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says Ottawa has "no legal, moral, political obligation to give taxpayer services to bogus asylum seekers, rejected claimants — people who are effectively illegal migrants.”
Pleas for compassion went unheeded. Protests didn’t work. Now the country’s two most powerful professions — doctors and lawyers — have resorted to court action. They are challenging Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s legal right to deny medical care to refugee claimants.
This week, Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care and the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers joined forces to ask the Federal Court to declare the government’s action unconstitutional. To provide real-life evidence, they were joined by three men — Daniel Garcia Rodriguez of Colombia, Ahmad Awatt of Iraq and Hanif Ayubi of Afghanistan — who escaped persecution in their home countries only to be denied life-saving drugs and treatment in Canada.
Dr. Meb Rashid, who heads the Crossroads Clinic for Refugees at Women’s College Hospital, made the medical case. “This is far below the standard any physician would hope to provide to his or her patients,” he said. “Ultimately these reductions will cost the health-care system as much or more in emergency care — and have already caused a great deal of suffering.”
Lorne Waldman, lead counsel, made the legal case. “It is also far below the standard any democratic country should provide for refugee claimants or any other human being under their jurisdiction,” he said. “These cuts are inconsistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Canada’s international obligations under the UN Refugee Convention.”
This is the first time, he added, that doctors and lawyers have taken joint court action “to right an obvious wrong.”
The case is likely to be long and expensive. Waldman estimates it will take at least a year to go through all the procedural requirements and cross-examinations required to bring the matter before a judge.
The government can afford a protracted fight. It has bottomless pockets (courtesy of Canadian taxpayers) and a battalion of lawyers to fend off court actions. That would have been enough to silence a group of poor, scared refugee claimants. But it won’t be enough to outmuscle a coalition of doctors and lawyers with financial backing and courtroom experience.
As part of its evidence, the group tabled accounts of 38 individuals with painful injuries and serious ailments treated — in defiance of Kenney’s directive — in clinics like Rashid’s. The list included a patient with Type 1 diabetes who is now being kept alive on free samples of insulin from a community clinic in Ottawa; a cancer patient who couldn’t get chemotherapy treatment until church groups put pressure on a hospital pharmacy; an 8-year-old child with severe asthma who couldn’t get a puffer; a pregnant 24-year-old woman in severe abdominal pain who was turned away by an obstetrician (she couldn’t pay $130); and an Iranian woman who limped into a free clinic on a badly broken foot.
But the extent of the damage goes further, Rashid said. Because the rules are confusing, some physicians refuse treatment to all refugee claimants, not just the ones Kenney is targeting (those from countries Ottawa deems safe and those appealing deportation orders). Because rumours of rejection are so widespread, some grievously ill people don’t seek medical help.
Kenney brushed off the court challenge summarily. “This is a dog-bites-man story,” he told reporters in Ottawa. “We have no legal, moral, political obligation to give taxpayer services to bogus asylum seekers, rejected claimants — people who are effectively illegal migrants.”
Federal lawyers will have trouble using this sort of rhetoric to square his policy with theCanadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in a court. It says explicitly that “everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person.” It guarantees every individual freedom from “discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin.”
What remains hard to understand about this showdown is the failure of parliamentarians — especially those who flaunt their Christian values — to stop Kenney in his tracks. What is even more inexplicable is the failure of Canadians — with a few honourable exceptions — to speak out.
The court of public opinion is the best place to settle issues of right and wrong. In this case, there is no place left but a court of law.
Carol Goar's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
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