Public Anxiety: Life Imprisonment

Immigration System Dept: Bill C-49 was triggered by public anxiety over the arrival on the West Coast of two boatloads of Tamil refugees. That anxiety was stoked by government suggestions that some of the refugees were terrorists, according to The Star. Ignatieff said this week that the bill is punishing the wrong people the victims of smuggling operations, not the smugglers. He also pointed out that the bill likely violates the Charter of Rights, with its guarantee of the right not to be arbitrarily detained and liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has taken a principled stand against Bill C-49, the so-called Preventing Smugglers from Abusing Canada s Immigration System Act. The Conservative legislation is deeply flawed and likely unconstitutional. The bill would toughen penalties for human smugglers, but that is considered largely symbolic because the maximum penalty is already life imprisonment. What bothers the Liberals and the other opposition parties is that the bill would also create a second tier of refugees those deemed by the government to be irregular arrivals and, thus, subject to incarceration for a year and a type of probation for five years. As reported in the news.
@t human smugglers, tamil refugees