Ottawa plans tougher detention rules, and braces for opposition

OTTAWA `IT'S DIFFICULT to make policy with a gun to your head.''

That blunt statement by a senior immigration official after this week's federal cabinet meeting sums up the dilemma facing Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan.

The gun is the unprecedented public outcry over this summer's arrival of boatloads of Chinese migrants, a groundswell that has spawned newspaper headlines shrieking such sentiments as Send them home, and fuelled pressure for a crackdown on refugee claimants.

Caplan is caught between the demand for change and a desire to uphold this country's humanitarian traditions.

The minister has cautioned against ``rushing to some kind of ill-considered quick fix,'' but has also promised reforms that go beyond proposals the government has already made public.

``In the face of recent events, I believe we can do more,'' Caplan said in a speech last month to the Canadian Club in Vancouver. Since then, the minister has declined interview requests, telling reporters she's waiting for the Oct. 12 Speech From The Throne before making any more announcements on refugee policy.

Caplan and her top officials have made clear that they are not consideringa total overhaul of Canada's refugee system - as the Reform party has advocated.

Everyone who arrives in Canada and makes a refugee claim will still get a full hearing and have the chance to appeal in court if the claim is rejected.

But in the wake of the arrival of 600 migrants in British Columbia, the immigration department is considering legislative changes that would increase the use of detention, in tandem with efforts to speed up refugee hearings and deportation proceedings.

The key element is a proposal to detain refugee claimants who arrive in trafficking operations for the duration of the refugee determination process - for months at a time - on the grounds that they wouldn't show up for their hearings otherwise.

That would give the minister the power to override current Immigration Act stipulations that refugee claimants cannot be locked up without a detention review by an adjudicator within 48 hours of being held, followed by another review seven days later and every 30 days after that.

Instead, refugee claimants would get a single detention review hearing at which the immigration department would argue they should be detained throughout the determination process - up to six months.

Detention would act as a deterrent to other boat people thinking of embarking for Canada and would prevent refugee claimants from slipping out of the country or evading deportation, officials say.

But detention is also a prickly issue in Canada that rubs up against civil liberties and the proposals are sure to enrage refugee advocates who can't abide the notion of any genuine refugees ending up behind bars.

``I fear a knee-jerk response to the most basest form of public opinion,'' says lawyer Sharryn Aiken, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and former president of the Canadian Council for Refugees.

``Detention is a tough issue. No one likes it, and it's not something that you do lightly in a liberal society if you believe in individual liberties,'' says one Caplan political aide. ``But on the other hand, if you're going to stop the smuggling, that's the black market economics of it. You can't let these guys get away with this.''