Graham Hudson

Toronto Metropolitan University

In February 2017, the city of Montreal adopted a policy entitled Access to Municipal Services Without Fear with a view to allowing non-status migrants to access some municipal programs and services without fear of being arrested and removed from Canada. This article offers a critical analysis of the city of Montreal’s policy. We discuss the main ba...

In Canada, urban centres have been especially hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and this public health crisis has generated particular risks for non-status and precarious migrants. Using official data and published research, this chapter explores how city sanctuary policies in Canada have addressed these pandemic risks and, more broadly, the future for...

The governance of security and migration is unfolding in new political spaces. Cooperation and competition among immigration officials, border guards, transnational security corporations, IT companies, local police, and international organizations has decoupled migration governance from national political structures. The chapters in the volume exam...

Cities across the world are contending with the human rights and policy consequences of exclusionary national and international migration regimes. Those in federal states have distinctive opportunities to create safe and inclusive (sub-)urban environments and to provide access to sub-national social services, like health, housing, and social assist...

Twenty years after the outbreak of the threat posed by international jihadist terrorism, which triggered the need for democracies to balance fundamental rights and security needs, 9/11 and the Rise of Global Anti-Terrorism Law offers an overview of counter-terrorism and of the interplay among the main actors involved in the field since 2001. This b...

The COVID-19 crisis has tested principles of universal health-care like never before. Even in nations with publicly-insured healthcare, access is formally and practically conditional on citizenship and immigration status. The COVID-19 crisis has prompted a small set of national and sub-national governments to temporarily waive citizenship-based res...

The officers of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) play pivotal roles at various stages in Canada’s refugee system, making decisions that are life-changing for asylum seekers. This article examines the evolving institutional setting and processes that define the CBSA’s enforcement policy and its consequences for asylum seekers in Canada. Draw...

The sanctuary city movement is aimed at limiting the local enforcement of federal immigration law. Canadian cities have joined this movement by pledging a) to provide access to municipal services without regard to immigration status, and b) to not share information identifying non-status migrants with federal immigration authorities. Despite these...

In today's society, the open court principle can sometimes clash with the need for secrecy on national security, national defence, and other grounds. Governments have had to devise solutions to uphold the rule of law while keeping in mind those concerns. Drawing on the experience of the United Kingdom, Canada has set up a system of secret hearings...

In 2012, Canada made regulatory changes and adopted legislations amending the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, including the Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act and the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. These pieces of legislation contain a number of measures which include: expedited refugee claim hearings, reduced procedural guarantees an...

Crimmigration is said to involve the blurring or fusion of criminal and immigration law in such a way as to submit migrants to virtually unfettered executive power. Keen to demonstrate the basis of the state’s constitutional obligations towards non-citizens, lawyers and academics argue that, despite legal form, a sub-set of immigration law is essen...

The concept of crimmigration is said to represent the blurring of criminal and immigration law, producing a sui genesis form of law within which sovereign power operates free from constitutional constraints. First articulated in the United States, crimmigration theory is just as (if not more so) prescriptive as descriptive. Centuries of immigration...

The “Sanctuary City” movement is a grassroots, human rights-based response to increased numbers of non-status migrants living and working in global cities. This paper shares the results of a one-year pilot study on Sanctuary City policy in Toronto, Canada. Styled Access T.O., Toronto's Sanctuary City policy is meant to provide non-status residents...

In this short essay, I review major legislative and jurisprudential developments (2015-2016) in the context of secret hearings. Developments of note include Bills C-51 and C-44, which sharply limit disclosure and adversarial challenge in legal proceedings concerned with substantive rights. Less conspicuous developments include a timely evaluation o...

This paper outlines a model of argumentation that formulates the processes by which international and comparative human rights law influence the reasoning of domestic judges. I argue that the persuasive influence of such law flows from, and is justifiable by reference to, a distinctive mode of rational argumentation centred around precedent and ana...

This article uses constitutional discourses on the legality of security certificates to shed light on darker, neglected corners of the security and migration nexus in Canada. I explore how procedures and practices used in the certificate regime have evolved and migrated to analogous adjudicative and discretionary decision-making contexts. I argue,...

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been investigating the array of crimes committed in Canada's Indian Residential Schools. Genocide is being invoked with increasing regularity to describe the crimes inflicted within the IRS system, the intent behind those crimes, and the legacies that have flowed from them. We ask the following questions....

The author appraises the constitutional dimensions of disclosure in Canadian security certificate proceedings, focusing on Mr. Adil Charkaoui's court-ordered, unconditional release following the October, 2009 judgment of Re Charkaoui. He uses this case as an inroad for exploring how earlier, landmark judgments at the Supreme Court level have both f...

The Canadian intelligence community has been the subject of much controversy relating to its role in global intelligence cooperation. Although a necessary feature of contemporary counter-terrorism law and policy, global security intelligence practices have led to a number of high-profile human rights abuses. This paper examines the processes by whi...

A review of Patrick Capps, Human Dignity and the Foundations of International Law by Graham Hudson

In this paper, the author examines the role of international law on the development of Canada’s security certificate regime. On the one hand, international law has had a perceptible impact on judicial reasoning, contributing to judges’ increased willingness to recognize the rights of non-citizens named in certificates and to envision better ways of...

In 19th and 20th century Canada, indigenous residential schooling formed part of a government-sponsored policy of forced assimilation. In this paper, we investigate to what extent the 1948 UN Genocide Convention (hereafter the UNGC) is applicable to the study of Aboriginal residential schooling in Canada. We begin with a short history of the reside...

The Canadian intelligence community has been the subject of much controversy relating to its role in global intelligence cooperation and accompnaying human rights abuses.Characterized by the feral exchange of intelligence across national borders, global intelligence cooperation has helped Canada adapt Cold War security institutions to contend with...

In this paper, the author explores the question of whether formalizing the Canadian law of reception would lead to an increase in the domestic influence of international law. He begins by briefly recounting Canada’s decidedly informal law of reception and, through a review of academic commentary, suggests a relationship between informality and inte...

The author reviews "Multiculturalism and the Canadian Constitution", edited by Stephen Tierney.

Abstract will be provided by author.