Protesters demand 'legal status for all'
 
JAN RAVENSBERGEN, The Gazette, Monday, May 05, 2008

Almost without exception, they spend their days and nights toiling deep in the shadows.

They are among the quiet ones who silently prepare your restaurant lunch, vacuum your office, wash your dirty laundry, mind your children or pick the locally grown carrots or apples on which you snack.

Yesterday, for a change, they weren't invisible.

A boisterous, chanting crowd of more than 400 demonstrators gave them voice in the Montreal neighbourhood where many of them - furtively - work and live.

The marchers paraded through the city's working-class Côte des Neiges district demanding recognition, respect and rights for what organizers said are 40,000 non-status migrants in the Montreal region.

A more widespread term is illegal immigrants.

According to the Canadian Hispanic Congress, an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 such individuals are quietly used across Canada to keep the nation's economic wheels turning.

Without immigration papers or status, however, organizers said, they are largely forced to live and work underground.

Easy targets for exploitation, they survive on the margins with virtually no recourse to the basic protections most in our society take for granted - in a nation built by successive waves of immigrants.

Aside from stoop-or-stretch work in our fields, "they work in restaurants, hotels, cabs, factories and warehouses," said Keetha Mercer, a march organizer with the Solidarity Across Borders group.

"Non-status migrants are the most exploited in the workforce, invisible in our system of capitalism and apartheid," added Jaggi Singh, another organizer and longtime social-justice advocate.

"They are our neighbours, co-workers, classmates, friends and families."

But they are just nobodies, as far as Quebec's Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail, or CSST, is concerned, Tess Tessalona said.

She helped found the neighbourhood's Immigrant Workers Centre eight years ago and is its co-ordinator.

In Quebec, "domestic workers are the only salaried workers who are not guaranteed CSST coverage by their employer," Tessalona said.

She came to Canada from the Philippines in 1988 as a domestic worker.

Domestic workers and care-givers, usually immigrant and female, who care for children, the infirm or aged but do not live in, are not eligible for compensation when they suffer work-related back pain, muscular or skeletal disorders, allergies, burns, cuts or stress.

Tessalona's advocacy group used the march to gather names for a two-pronged demand to submit to David Whissell, Quebec's labour minister, seeking:

- Mandatory CSST coverage of domestic workers, regardless of immigration status or validity of work permit.

- That basic CCST information be available in languages other than French.

During the past five years, Statistics Canada reported Thursday, the economic chasm between native-born Canadians and immigrants has widened.

"That's not news to me, Tessalona said. "I see it every day."

Currently at the centre, "we are working on 500 cases," she said.

The march was billed as part of national day of action "for immigrant justice, and against poverty, racism and racial profiling."

Speakers and marchers condemned recent changes to security-certificate and immigration legislation from the minority Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Adil Charkaoui - a Montrealer who remains under a federal security certificate and a form of house arrest that includes an obligatory electronic bracelet - joined the march.

"I want to give a message of hope and solidarity," said Charkaoui, who has been fighting a deportation order since 2003.

"We march to again demand a full, inclusive and ongoing (immigration) regularization program," organizer Singh said, "meaning (legal) status for all."

"We refuse," Mercer added, "to be invisible. We refuse to live in fear."

janr@thegazette.canwest.com

For more information, visit solidarityacrossborders.org or www.adilinfo.org.

 

We were disgusted and angered to see yet another attack on the reputation of Adil Charkaoui published in several media outlets last week.

Since his victory in the Supreme Court in February 2007, and since the Supreme Court agreed to hear a second challenge, this time aimed at the investigative practices of CSIS in security certificate cases, a steady stream of ‘revelations’ about Charkaoui has appeared in the media. Though not one of these has been backed up by proof, they have all tended to discredit Charkaoui, an eloquent and powerful defender of the rights of immigrants and of elementary justice in Canada.

Lawyers for Montreal terror suspect say revamped law is still unconstitutional: 'The lawmaker didn't respect the Supreme Court decision'
 
TU THANH HA, Globe and Mail, 29 February 2008

MONTREAL -- Canada's revamped security certificate regime, which was hurriedly enacted two weeks ago, will face a constitutional challenge, lawyers for Montreal terror suspect Adil Charkaoui announced yesterday.

The previous system had been overturned last year by the Supreme Court of Canada, which rejected its use of secret evidence against suspects.

This forced the federal government to introduce a new law - Bill C-3 - creating "special advocate" lawyers who will act for defendants in closed-door hearings.

Michelle Lalonde, The Gazette, 23 February 2008

Jonathan Montpetit, The Canadian Press, 27 January 2008

MONTREAL - The sudden appearance of a damning CSIS report that paints alleged terrorist Adil Charkaoui as a jihadist insider is feeding claims by Charkaoui and his supporters of a smear campaign, while also raising questions about security at Canada's spy service.

CSIS' assistant director of intelligence admitted earlier this month to a federal court judge that the service had recently "discovered" a report of an April 2001 interview with Charkaoui.

The interview did not form part of the evidence used by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to detain Charkaoui under a security certificate in 2003, even though it deals with his purported extensive knowledge of Islamic-extremist circles in Montreal.

January 3rd, 2008, Ottawa Xpress, Sara Falconer
 

     JAN RAVENSBERGEN, The Gazette, 7 December 2007

Teams of activists launched a one-day blitz of 17 Montreal-region Members of Parliament Friday morning to underline their opposition to new security-certificate legislation which could be given third reading as early as next week by the House of Commons.

The round of visits is expected to culminate at 3 p.m., with a visit to the St. Laurent-Cartierville riding office of Stéphane Dion, Liberal Opposition leader.

About 50 people are on the road as part of the effort, said Mary Foster, an organizer with Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui.

    BILL CURRY, Globe and Mail, December 7, 2007 at 5:05 AM EST

OTTAWA — Adil Charkaoui chastised a House of Commons committee of MPs yesterday for reviving an immigration security bill that he says is virtually identical to the one he and others successfully defeated in the Supreme Court of Canada.

Mr. Charkaoui and Mohamed Harkat, who also made an appearance, are alleged to be members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network. They are currently living under strict bail conditions after security certificate detentions.

    7 Dec 2007, Richard Brennan, Toronto Star

OTTAWA–Terror suspect Adil Charkaoui says he is a victim of a CSIS smear campaign because he refused to be a snitch for the Canadian security agency.

The 34-year-old Montreal resident levelled that charge yesterday while appearing before the Commons public safety and national security committee reviewing Bill C-3, designed to tighten national security laws.

"I was asked to work for CSIS. ... I was going to become a rat on my own (Muslim) community and I said `No, I am not going to do that' and CSIS wouldn't let go of this. They dug their heels in and I am still suffering at the hands of CSIS. And unfortunately Bill C-3 will not protect me from the abuses of CSIS," he said.

"I am not a terrorist," he added.

    2 December 2007, Thomas Walkom, Toronto Star

How casually we take civil rights. A Commons committee is examining the government's plan to fix an unconstitutional law that allows it to lock up non-citizens indefinitely without charge. But committee members won't let lawyers for the six men detained under this law appear before them because –given a tight February deadline set by the Supreme Court, plus the six weeks of Christmas holidays that MPs allow themselves – there just isn't enough time.

"We break in mid-December and don't come back until the end of January," explained Liberal MP and committee vice-chair Roy Cullen. "We could sit in January, but I'll be in New Zealand."