Canada has the opportunity to open its borders to climate-displaced people by planning an effective response to the developing crisis, according to advocates.
The country’s role in aiding climate refugees could help mitigate damage to the ecosystem, such as deforestation due to uncontrolled mass migration.
Currently, none of the streams in Canada’s humanitarian immigration program recognizes climate migrants. Millions of migrants could be on the move because of the ongoing climate crisis and the impacts of climate change.
According to Statistics Canada, the country has the highest greenhouse gas emissions per capita rate of the top 10 emitting countries and regions. This leads to global warming and climate change by trapping the sun’s heat.
The World Bank predicted the climate crisis could cause 216 million people to be internally displaced across six regions around the world by 2050. These regions include Latin America, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific.
Sarom Rho, an organizer for Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, said to live in a fair society is for everyone to have the same rights.
“When people are denied permanent resident status in Canada, it means that we live in a society where not everybody has the same rights and that makes it possible for employers as well as colleges and universities, landlords, and education recruiters to exploit us,” she said. “And this is deeply tied to climate migration.”
Rho said Canada’s greenhouse emissions contribute to the issue.
“Keeping millions of people in the country on temporary status is creating a lot of profit for these very employers and corporations. Canada produces the most greenhouse gas emissions per capita, but it's often the poorer countries that are being affected and pushed out of their homes,” she said.
Rho said migrants are pushed into these immigration systems that keep people temporarily and continue to facilitate exploitation.
“But there is a solution and one of which is to ensure an immigration system that grants full rights and protections to everybody. And that the only way for that to be possible is full and permanent immigration status for all,” she said.
Canada is one of the countries responsible for the climate crisis, Rho said. According to Climate Watch, Canada is ranked in the top ten countries that produce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Many families can't even grow food because of the slow desertification of soil and so forth and then get pushed out of their country. So, the climate crisis is, you know, climate justice is migrant justice,” she said.
On June 1, 2023, 34 civil society organizations that work on climate and environmental issues from across Canada sent a joint letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calling on him to ensure permanent resident status for all.
Rho said the letter was to ask to create an untapped regularization program for all undocumented people that Trudeau had promised 18 months ago. Trudeau has not yet responded.
Rachel Bryce, co-chair of the climate migration group at the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL), said Canada has an opportunity and an obligation to create safe pathways for climate-induced displaced individuals.
“We in Canada have a history of at least publicly accepting and welcoming migrants, and there is now a political priority to welcome 1.5 million migrants by 2025,” Bryce said.
She said it's within the government's mandate and interest to increase the number of immigrants coming into the country.
“It’s also within the government's international human rights law obligations to address the human rights needs of these climate displaced people if they come within Canadian borders,” Bryce said.
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Canada has an opportunity to meet immigration goals and welcome in these vulnerable individuals, and can do this in a variety of ways, she said.
“We have access to both legal and policy solutions for the lack of protection for climate migrants. Canada could do this through short-term pilot projects to begin and test out solutions that could be creating a public policy class under section 25.2 of the Immigration Refugee Protection Act,” Bryce said.
Canada has helped migrants in the past during the earthquake in Haiti and the tsunami in India, she said.
“Canada has the chance to create a special class for climate-induced people who require assistance and might be able to apply to move here,” Bryce said.
It's a chance to control and test and then create pathways when more individuals are leaving their borders, she said.
“With these sort of natural disaster examples, I think it's a natural transition to understand that climate change is now impacting millions around the world, both because of national disasters, but also because of slower onset effects of climate change, which would be, you know, sea level rise or desertification, things like that,” she said.
Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, a senior researcher at Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), specializes in climate policy and climate impacts that affect migration.
He said heat and drought are among the biggest reasons why people are being displaced.
“We’re already seeing that in parts of the Middle East and South Asia. We’ll see more and more of that. In the US for example, as the southern US gets drier and hotter, people have to move further north,” Mertins-Kirkwood said.
He said there is no doubt people are eventually going to have to move as climate impacts make
it harder to live in certain places.
“That adds to the challenges of finding a place for refugees in the world and it's only going to get worse,” Mertins-Kirkwood said.
Earlier this year, wildfires spread across Canada affecting the air quality, but Canada as a whole is going to continue to be quite livable, he said.
“The north in particular faces a lot of challenges from a heating planet. But I didn’t see any forecast that would suggest that many parts of Canada would be unlivable,” Mertins-Kirkwood said.
He said the tough question is where people should move.
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"Climate justice is migrant justice."
- Sarom Rho, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change
Statistics Canada data shows many newcomers to Canada mainly choose to settle in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia, and this is likely to continue.
“We can do a better job of accommodating that kind of growth,” Mertins-Kirkwood said.
Canada’s weather patterns are used to climate impacts, he said.
“We’re used to having big winter storms and summer heat waves, floods and wildfires. So, when we go from five extremely hot days to eight extremely hot days it doesn’t feel like a big difference to us because we’re used to those fluctuations, but it actually is a big difference,” he said.
This is not usually the case in countries closer to the equator, Mertins-Kirkwood said.
“There are tropical islands where the temperature is within a degree 365 days of the year. You know, it's like you get your rain every morning and get your sun more or less,” he said. “And so those places feel the change much more acutely. Like a temporary degree change, there is a much more noticeable difference.”
Since Canada is used to these fluctuating extremes, Canadians will not perceive the climate as changing as much as it is until it gets to the point like it has this summer with the wildfires, Mertins-Kirkwood said.
“This could be the new normal,” he said.
According to a report by the Canadian government, the largest source countries of international migrants are going to experience risks of extreme weather events, droughts, water scarcity and sustained heat events by 2050.
Most people seeking to migrate to Canada for climate-related reasons are generally people with family or connections in Canada that can help with their travels. Others seek admission as refugees or for humanitarian and compassionate reasons, the report said.
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Canada continues to be a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and benefits from it. This has raised the question if Canada must allow more migrants in.
“It’s a question that the world leaders are grappling with at the Conference of Parties. For example, COP27 last year they introduced the loss and damage fund,” Bryce said.
COP27 was an international climate change conference that was held in Egypt by the United Nations and developing nations have been demanding the creation of the fund to offset the damage caused by climate change.
“That is an actual recognition that, yes, the powerful industrialized nations of the world, such as Canada, have benefited from greenhouse gas emissions and from all the pollutants that lead to the increasing climate change that we're seeing today,” she said.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Pakistan’s foreign minister, said nations that contribute the least to global warming suffer the most.
“Those who have contributed the least to global warming are suffering the most,” he wrote in an essay for the UN. “For 30 years, the most vulnerable countries have pressed for a fund through which the countries that have added the most to global carbon emissions would help vulnerable countries recover from climate disasters and other consequences of climate change, including rising sea levels, drought, hurricanes and floods.”
Bryce said Canada has a responsibility to act and put in a proportionate amount of money to respond to the impacts caused by pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
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Canada remains one of the world’s major polluters. It is recognized that lower-income impoverished countries have largely not been the major polluters in the way Canada has, she said.
“Climate migration hopefully will be on the mandate at the next Conference of Parties, so that it can be added more explicitly to the discussions around the loss and damage fund,” Bryce said.
Support for migration is becoming more of a priority and nations are recognizing they need to invest money and invest on their political will to welcome those who are displaced, she said.
Bryce said the view from the international level reveals more focus on developing planned relocations for affected populations within their countries or neighbouring countries.
“We're at the stage where whole swaths of countries are unlivable,” she said.
Some island nations are disappearing, particularly as water levels in the Pacific Ocean rise, which calls for more migration solutions, Bryce said. This issue is in line with the conversations needed around financial responsibilities for the major polluters in international organizations and associations, she said.
“We need to have that conversation around responsibility for the displaced people as well,” Bryce said.
The amount of funding that will go into responding to the effects of climate change is another key area of concern for Canada, as well as who is in charge.
“Is that going to be made to be as a decision between internal Canadian displacement and external displacement of the majority of climate displaced people?” Bryce said.
However, nations must consider and care for their residents and citizens.
“It doesn't have to be seen as a mutually exclusive solution. I think that there needs to be sufficient funding that we can respond to both issues,” she said.
The advocacy for status for all migrants continues with planned action events taking place across Canada.
Migrant Workers Alliance for Change is hosting several rallies on Sept. 17, 2023, to continue the fight for migrant workers, Rho said.
Organizations across Canada plan to fight for human rights and protection and will advocate to regularize undocumented migrants in the country to help combat climate change. Creating proactive pathways for climate migrants and climate-induced displaced people is within Canada’s immigration mandate.
There is a chance now to control as more individuals are leaving their borders, Bryce said.
“It’s in our interest to create opportunities for new Canadians and new residents to come into the country and add to our economy and add to our mosaic of people who make up this country,” she said.
“I just think that it's an inevitability that we'll need a solution. There's a lot on our table,” she said.
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