Acceso usuarios
Peter J. Carver
This paper examines two legacies of the Harper government in immigration and refugee law. The first is a discursive legacy, that is, a legacy pertaining to the governments particular characterization of claimants for refugee and immigrant status seen through a series of its legal initiatives. The government engaged in a "discourse ofdistrust" with respect to claimants, repeatedly identifying them as persons trying to fool or take advantage of Canada's immigration and social welfare schemes. The second legacy pertains more to a number of institutional and procedural changes in the immigration system.
These initiatives have not received the same attention given the higher profile measures that comprise the discourse ofdistrust. However, they embody trends in Canadian immigration law toward enhancing the authority of executive government in administering the country's immigration programs, together with a consequent loss of security for the prospective and recent newcomer to Canada.
In the end the discursive legacy of the Harper government appears to have outweighed its institutional legacy. The Conservative Government took a sword to many of the long-established understandings that informed Canada's immigration law - and it seems that the Governments truculence in matters dealing with immigrants and refugees served as one of the bases on which the election of October 2015 turned. For the foreseeable future, political discussions about immigration issues in Canada will start from a different place than the distrust and fear of the stranger
