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Judges in too many cases are protecting non-citizens from the consequences of their criminal conduct on their status in Canada. In doing so, they are flying in the face of what Parliament and the Supreme Court have directed. And they are adding to a growing sense among Canadians that judges are at times a law unto themselves.

Consider a 2024 Calgary case offered up by the federal Conservatives, who are proposing to bar judges entirely from considering the immigration consequences at sentencing.

The case involved a man living in Canada on a visitor’s permit who sexually assaulted a young woman in a bar. The woman, 18, was standing in line with friends, waiting to order drinks. Rajbir Singh, a 25-year-old Indian man not known to the woman, touched her buttocks and vagina, and, when she spun and confronted him, grabbed her vagina again.

Under federal law, foreign nationals convicted of a crime are subject to a removal order. But Justice Anne Brown of the Alberta Court of Justice gave Mr. Singh a conditional discharge so he would not have a criminal conviction registered against him. Citing a legal opinion the court had received, she wrote that he could still be deported,........

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