The Great White North: Canada’s New Border Bill Appeases the Trump Administration
Petra Molnar / Jul 1, 2025Petra Molnar is the author of The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in The Age of Artificial Intelligence, published by The New Press in 2024.
From protests against the Trump Administration’s immigration policies in Los Angeles to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents snatching parents picking up their children from school and deporting people to countries they have never set foot in, the world’s attention is on the United States. Its southern border and the Trump Administration's aggressive immigration enforcement have dominated headlines. But there is another, often overlooked border where trouble is also brewing – this time, in the north, where a bill introduced by the newly elected Canadian Government is set to establish sweeping new immigration powers.
After months of tense negotiations on tariffs between the US and Canada and threats of making Canada the 51st state of the US, it is no coincidence that the first major bill from Canada’s new Liberal government, led by Prime Minister Mark Carney, is a sweeping overhaul of border and immigration policy aimed at appeasing the Trump Administration. But by placing restrictions on refugee status applications from people who arrive via the US border, normalizing surveillance, and expanding cross-border data sharing, the border bill threatens not only the rights of Canadians but also the rights of the most vulnerable communities, including asylum seekers. This omnibus piece of legislation dramatically broadens government powers, erodes judicial checks on surveillance, and gives ministers discretion to cancel immigration statuses.
The Strong Borders Act – But ‘Strong’ at what cost?
Introduced in early June 2025, the Carney government's ‘Strong Borders Act,’ or Bill C-2, is a major overhaul of Canada's border and immigration system. If enacted, Bill C-2 would substantially expand surveillance, along with data sharing between Canada and the United States. As a recent analysis from the Citizen Lab noted, Bill C-2 quietly empowers the government to “implement and ratify a new data-sharing treaty, publicly known as the ‘Second Additional Protocol’ to the Budapest Convention ('2AP').”
The Citizen Lab added that C-2’s introduction is happening at the same time as “closed-door negotiations with the United States over a potential bilateral law enforcement data-sharing agreement between Canada and the United States under a piece of U.S. legislation called the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act ('CLOUD Act').” The Citizen Lab’s analysis further highlights that the bill’s vague provisions referencing agreements or arrangements that could compel domestic actors to share data with foreign authorities eroding Canada’s stronger Charter-based privacy protections.
As Professor Robert Diab explores, the bill also massively expands major search powers over private data, provisions which will likely be challenged as unconstitutional and infringing Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Indeed, according to Diab, “If Canada’s election of the Prime Minister Carney was meant to be a rejection of authoritarian trends down south, things are not off to a good start.”
Unfortunately, Canada is no stranger to its own quiet brand of authoritarianism, particularly when it comes to migration. Canadian immigration policy has long been shaped by exclusionary laws, from a head tax on those arriving from China to the turning away of Jewish refugees during WWII and the interception of Tamil asylum seekers in 2009–2010. During, the Harper Era of conservatism from 2006 to 2015 where immigration was restricted, I worked as a frontline refugee support worker then in Winnipeg and Toronto, supporting families navigating a constantly changing landscape of policymaking aimed at appeasing an anti-migration electorate such as visa impositions, bars to refugee status, and cruel treatment of temporary foreign workers, the backbone of Canada’s farming and homecare sectors.
The 51st state: Maybe not on paper, but increasingly in practice
An interjurisdictional and a global perspective shows us the new Strong Borders Act is only the latest example of security narratives winning out over a human rights-based approach to migration (which I have advocated for at the UN in the context of digital border technologies). Some of the Act’s provisions, like the one-year bar on refugee status for people arriving via the Canada-US border without exceptions is more draconian than changes implemented in the US (although claimants in Canada will be able to avail themselves of another application for protection, the incredibly discretionary Pre-Removal Risk Assessment, or a PRRA, which has a success rate of 2 to 4%, compared to the 78 to 82% of all refugee claims).
The act also comes on the heels of a December 2024 press conference, in which the Canadian federal government announced proposed new measures to expand its management of Canada’s border with the United States. These measures were intended to appease the incoming Trump administration and to avoid a threatened 25 percent import tariff. The proposal included expansions of border technologies, including federal police counterintelligence, 24/7 surveillance between ports of entry, helicopters, drones, and mobile towers.
Donald Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, explicitly called out Canada after his appointment, calling the Canadian border an “extreme” vulnerability. Rather than defending the rights of ‘people-on-the-move,’ as migration becomes increasingly politicized south of our border, it is disappointing that the new Canadian government is not ensuring that our immigration system is based on fundamental rights, not to mention that it remains constitutionally compliant.
It is deeply troubling that the new Canadian government has placed appeasing the US government above people's human rights. Instead of taking a strong stance against the repression in the US, Canada is capitulating to the anti-migration rhetoric, with the hope that they may be rewarded economically. Days after the tabling of Bill C-2, Canada and the US announced a potential resolution of their tariff war. However, appeasing an unstable regime does not work. By June, trade talks once again broke down between Canada and the US, this time over Canada’s proposed taxation of US tech firms, leading Canada to once again yield to US pressure and rescind the Digital Services Tax.
Even though Prime Minister Carney defeated a populist conservative candidate to win a surprising majority, his policies so far skew more towards the south. With minimal transparency or parliamentary debate, fuller disclosure and democratic scrutiny are necessary before the Stronger Borders Act comes into force, especially around the significant expansion of surveillance and data sharing powers.
Concerns around the Strong Borders Act transcend migration. Border surveillance technologies do not remain at the border. Instead, they start impacting neighboring communities. For example, communities in Vermont and New York have already raised concerns about possible privacy infringements with the installation of new surveillance towers at the Canada/US border. Also, under the current text of Bill C-2, law enforcement may have access to sensitive personal data collected for immigration purposes. In the US, there are similar fears, where surveillance is impacting both people on the move and advocates working in the migrant justice sector. Will this data sharing put people further at risk?
Canada must resist the urge to capitulate to the United States' increasingly repressive immigration agenda and instead uphold its own commitments to justice, human rights, and the protection of those seeking safety. Anything less risks blurring the line between Canada and the US, at which point, we may as well become the 51st state.
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