April 2026

I have a client whom I will call John. Of course, his name is not John, because if his name were John, and not Vineet, Hassan, Abdul or any other name that wasn’t like John, I wouldn’t need to be writing about him.

John came to Canada as an international student when international students thought they could come to Canada, study hard, get their degree, get a post-graduation work permit, get a job, work hard at their job, apply for permanent residence, be approved, and a few years later, get a Canadian passport.

For John, a boy who grew up liking things that boys are not supposed to like, like other boys, and make-up and dancing and clothes that boys are definitely not supposed to wear, Canada was a place where he could be the kind of man who could like those things. But he could also visit his family on school breaks, leaving his heels and makeup in Canada, his family never knowing that he was an up-and-coming drag star and that he had a boyfriend he loved.

John eventually realized that, for him, like thousands of other international students, the welcome mat had been pulled out from under him and that he would not be able to gain permanent residence. Canada no longer wants as many immigrants, and John no longer qualifies based on the tightened criteria. Going back home would mean no boyfriend, no make-up, no heels, no drag, no freedom to love or live the life he needed to be himself.  Loving whom he wanted to love would mean losing his family, his freedom, and possibly even his life.

So John came to me, and I helped him claim asylum based on SOGIESC grounds – sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics.

Earlier this month, John received a letter which stated:

This is in response to your application for refugee protection in Canada. I have reviewed your application and, pursuant to section A104 and subsection 101(1)(b.1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), I have determined that your claim for refugee protection may be ineligible to be referred to the Refugee Protection Division of the Immigration Refugee Board of Canada (IRB).

Under subsections 101(1)(b.1) and 101(1.1) of the IRPA, a refugee claim is ineligible to be referred to the IRB if the claimant entered Canada after June 24, 2020 and made their claim more than one year after that entry; if the claimant entered Canada multiple times after that date, the one-year period is calculated from the day after their first entry.

According to our records, you entered Canada on X at Toronto Pearson International Airport. Our records also indicate that your refugee claim was submitted on X.

If you have additional information or evidence regarding the circumstances of your entry to Canada, as noted above, please submit it through the portal by X. Only information or evidence pertaining to the circumstances of your entry to Canada, as it relates to the applicability of subsection 101(1)(b.1) of the IRPA, will be considered.

If we do not receive your submission by this date, a decision will be made based on the information we have on file. If the decision is that your claim is ineligible for referral to the Refugee Protection Division, you will face removal from Canada.

This letter was issued because of Bill C-12, the Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act, which became law on March 26, 2026. This law does many things, but as it pertains to John, it means he is no longer able to have his refugee claim heard by a decision-maker because he had been in Canada for more than a year before making his claim.

The new law applies to anyone who has even visited Canada at any time before June 25, 2020. That precise date is used because that is when Canada started tracking air and land entries and exits. You can come to Canada as a visitor, go home, have a triggering event that causes you to fear for your life, come back to Canada to seek refugee protection, and be barred from claiming protection because you had been to Canada more than a year previously and failed to claim protection. Not even the USA has a law that draconian.

The letter John received states that if no evidence is received disputing the date he arrived in Canada (which there is none), he will face removal from Canada. Absolutely nothing in this letter assures John that he will be entitled to a pre-removal risk assessment (PRRA) before being removed from Canada. The PRRA process is a far inferior process to the refugee claims process, with hearings conducted by independent members of the Immigration and Refugee Board, but it is an opportunity for John to provide a written statement of why he is afraid to go home and for me to provide written legal submissions and supporting country condition documents that support John’s attestation that he would be at risk of arrest, detention and possibly death if he were to live openly as a gay man and drag performer in his country. Why would the Canadian government, with its history of compassion towards asylum seekers, seek to scare people by sending out such misleading and openly hostile letters?

Groups I belong to, such as the Refugee Lawyers Association of Ontario, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, and the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association, are gearing up towards Charter challenges against Bill C-12. It will be a years-long court battle, and a win may come too late for many individuals who will have already been deported.