Written by Rahul Balasundaram
O
n March 26, Bill C-12, the Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act, received royal assent and became law. It marks one of the most significant shifts in Canada’s refugee and immigration system in the past decade, with new ineligibility provisions for refugee claimants and new powers for the government to mass cancel immigration documents.
The first iteration of the legislation was introduced in June 2025 as Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act. However, due to privacy and surveillance concerns, as well as lack of support by the Conservatives, the bill was shelved. Instead, the Liberal government introduced Bill C-12 in October 2025, with the refugee and immigration provisions from Bill C-2 intact.
The Senate committee tasked with studying the bill recommended deleting or making significant amendments to the sections that would make changes to the refugee and immigration system. However, the concerns outlined by activists and civil society organizations were largely dismissed, and the legislation was passed with minimal amendments.
The omnibus legislation forces individuals to make a refugee claim before the Immigration and Refugee Board—an independent and quasi-judicial administrative tribunal—within a year of first arriving in Canada. Critics argue that this arbitrary timeline is unfair, as people need time to disclose their stories and gather evidence to make a refugee claim, or because conditions in a country of origin can change at any moment.
For example, Asya Medea, a trans woman who first came to Canada on a student visa in 2018, made a refugee claim over a year after arriving due to growing dangers for LGBTQ+ people in Turkey. While her refugee claim was approved in 2020 and she now has permanent residency, a person in a similar situation would not be able to make a refugee claim under the new law.
Canada’s new eligibility rule replicates a similar requirement in the United States, where individuals are forced to make a refugee claim within a year of their most recent arrival in the country. However, in Canada, the new eligibility provision applies retroactively to claims made after June 3, 2025 (when Bill C-2 was first introduced) and to individuals who first entered Canada after June 24, 2020, nearly six years before the law came into effect.
“I think this is an injustice because you have not given this person an opportunity to explain why they are running away from their country, where there is a fear for loss of life or being arrested,” said Tonny Muzira, a former refugee claimant and a representative of the Uganda Community Centre Canada.
Bill C-12 also introduces new powers to cancel, suspend or change immigration documents and applications, such as work and study permits. These discretionary powers are limited to address matters of “public interest,” such as fraud, public health or safety risks, administrative errors, or national security, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
Yet these provisions—which have been widely criticized by migrant rights organizations and activists—create a culture of precarity, fear and instability for individuals with temporary status.
“There are immediate impacts on people who are already in the queue for permanent residence or have been planning to apply, for example, international students who have been working and studying here with the expectation of trying to find a path forward to stay in Canada,” said a representative of the Ottawa chapter of the International Migrants Alliance (IMA) Canada.
“They are trying to shift the blame to migrants, despite us knowing that it’s actually these underlying systems that are both failing the Canadian public, but are also putting migrants in vulnerable situations.”
Bill C-12 also enables the government to share personal information about migrants, such as their identity and status, across federal, provincial and territorial governments. As the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group highlights, this information could be shared with housing providers, health and welfare authorities, and police and security agencies, exacerbating risks of discrimination and precarity for migrants.
In this case, someone who loses their status may be unable to receive social assistance if provincial authorities receive this information under the new law. Information could also be shared with foreign entities with departmental permission, creating risks if someone were to return, including forcefully, back to their country of origin.
Impeding Refugees’ Access to Healthcare
Bill C-12 is not the only legislation affecting refugees in Canada. Starting May 1st, the government is introducing significant changes to the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP).
“We should be lifting up the healthcare access for everyone in Canada and not punching down on people who are arguably some of the most vulnerable and marginalized in our communities.” – Dr. Yipeng Ge
The IFHP provides limited healthcare coverage for refugees and refugee claimants, such as hospital visits and ambulance services. It also covers prescription medications and essential health products and services, such as vision and dental care, mental health counselling, physiotherapy, and assistive devices including prosthetics, mobility aids, and hearing aids.
Under the changes, beneficiaries will now be required to pay $4 for each prescription and cover 30 percent of the cost of these essential products and services.
Medical professionals and civil society organizations have criticized these cuts.
“Adding financial barriers to access medication and medically necessary services…will make people rethink whether they should spend their money on their health or on paying for rent and groceries, especially for people who often have very little to build a life for themselves in Canada after fleeing war, conflict, political persecution, or even genocide,” said Dr. Yipeng Ge in an e-mail to The Leveller.
Stephen Harper’s Conservative government made similar changes to the IFHP back in 2012, resulting in a Federal Court decision which concluded that the cuts constituted “cruel and unusual” treatment, especially for children who had come to Canada with their parents.
“Cuts to the IFHP have previously shown to increase healthcare system utilization in ways that are more expensive, like admissions to the hospital and visits to the emergency department, because this is what happens when preventable or treatable conditions are left untreated, and care is deferred to the point of medical emergencies,” continued Dr. Ge.
By failing to address the healthcare needs of refugees at the early stage, these cuts will further strain already-exhausted hospitals and emergency rooms, especially in a time of widespread underfunding and privatization of healthcare across Canada.
“We should be lifting up the healthcare access for everyone in Canada and not punching down on people who are arguably some of the most vulnerable and marginalized in our communities,” said Dr. Ge.
Prioritizing Militarism to Scapegoat Refugees and Migrants
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s actions in the past year pave a dangerous path forward for future governments to introduce even more draconian refugee and immigration policies. The Conservatives are already campaigning to further restrict refugees’ rights and their access to healthcare.
These policies reflect a wider pattern of the scapegoating of migrants and refugees for issues such as housing affordability, access to healthcare, and the cost of living crisis, all of which disproportionately impact migrants and refugees.
Speaking to The Breach last year, Syed Hussan of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC) explained how real estate speculators, not migrants, are driving up housing prices, resulting in temporary workers and international students living in substandard and unsafe housing conditions. Hussan explain that “the way to distract people is to tell them that the fault is your neighbour, the person who is the working class ‘other,’ the racialized person, the immigrant and the migrant.”
“They are trying to shift the blame to migrants, despite us knowing that it’s actually these underlying systems that are both failing the Canadian public, but are also putting migrants in vulnerable situations,” said the Ottawa representative of IMA Canada to The Leveller.
This political narrative blaming migrants for deteriorating quality of life locally has been responded to by migrant justice groups for years. Following Ontario’s 2024 cap on international students, Sarom Rho of MWAC stated to TVO that “Premier Ford distracting from his chronic underfunding of public education by blowing a racist dog-whistle that casts international students as outsiders, which will worsen the already pervasive anti-migrant climate.”
At a Migrant Rights Network demonstration on September 15, 2024, a speaker countered Ford’s talking points. “If the international student is considered a revenue source that this country can actually make a whole digit in their GDP, I think this is how we know how much this country needs international students… how much this economy relies on international students. They are not the ones who created the housing crisis. This government blames migrant workers for the unemployment and job shortage and the rise of cost of living…”
The Carney government’s austerity agenda targeted at refugees and migrants over the next four years is particularly staggering, evident through cuts to refugee health care ($829 million), the settlement program ($686 million), housing for refugee claimants ($256 million), and overall reduction in services ($138 million) due to a lower acceptance rate of migrants.
In its immigration levels plan, the government also pledged to reduce the admission of temporary residents by 43% this year.
While public services, particularly those for migrants and refugees, are being cut dramatically, defence spending is being bolstered at unprecedented levels. As the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found, the $56.7 billion in cuts across the federal government is balanced by an almost identical $58.8 billion boost in the Department of National Defence’s budget.
Looking ahead, Carney has pledged to spend a staggering $470 billion over the next decade under the Defence Industrial Strategy. The government is prioritizing the military-industrial complex, which, according to IMA Canada, is not only detrimental to both people and the planet but will also increase forced displacement around the world.
The IMA Canada representative underlined the need to address Canada’s contributions to the “root causes” of global displacement. For example, Canada is playing an active role in global conflicts that force people to become refugees, such as by sending weapons to fuel the genocide in Palestine and Sudan.
Current political and media narratives fail to capture the realities faced by refugees and migrants forced to navigate a complex system to access work, housing and healthcare. As Muzira explained, there are many misconceptions around refugees receiving more support and benefits compared to citizens, as refugees are forced to hold multiple jobs to survive.
Both Muzira and the representative of IMA Canada underlined that migrants and refugees are the backbone of essential sectors such as agriculture, healthcare and caregiving. Instead of granting permanent status and equal rights, they are forced to work under an exploitative system that commodifies their labour and benefits corporations and political elites.
“We need to identify what the challenges are that we are facing in Canada so we are not blaming migrants to clean up our system,” said Muzira.
