court of appeal

The Federal Court of Appeal has overturned a Federal Court ruling that had essentially scuppered the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement on refugees. (That’s the thing that got rid of all those unsightly northbound queues of the world’s downtrodden at various points along the 49th parallel, which you may remember from the 1990s, by prohibiting most refugee claims at land border crossings and forcing asylum-seekers already in the U.S. to try their luck in the less permissive American system.) The provisions of the agreement had remained in effect while the government appealed, but as the editorial notes, getting rid of it would have meant “a nightmare of complications” for a refugee system that’s already stretched to its breaking point. So I was rather surprised to learn all this from an approving Globe and Mail editorial, which, bizarrely, seems to be the only mention of this very important event anywhere in the entire media.