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Chris Selley: There's no reason for courts to be setting Canadian immigration policy

It's Parliament's job to decide whether non-citizen criminals should be deported

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In a recent ruling, Court of Quebec judge Antoine Piché tore a strip off Crown prosecutors who appear before him for discounting sentences based on offenders’ immigration status, to avoid non-citizens being flagged for deportation — which is supposed to happen after a criminal sentence of six months or more is handed down.

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I was most intrigued by Piché’s annoyance at the widespread insistence that this doesn’t happen. This is one of those Canadian phenomena that clearly exists — National Post has reported many such cases, many of which wouldn’t be known to the public otherwise — but that we’re supposed to pretend does not.

Chris Selley: There's no reason for courts to be setting Canadian immigration policy Back to video

“Immigration experts say the Conservatives’ characterization of Canada’s justice system as being biased in favour of non-citizens is simply false,” CBC News reported in August, after Tory immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner raised the issue. (She tabled a private member’s bill that would ban the practice.)

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