Former immigration minister says Canada’s reputation on welcoming refugees is at risk

Lloyd Axworthy, former minister of Foreign Affairs, speaks at a rally in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's threats to Canadian sovereignty, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Sunday, March 9, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

OTTAWA — Former immigration minister Lloyd Axworthy, a prominent global champion for refugees, said he believes Canada is putting its reputation as a welcoming place for refugees at risk through recent federal policy shifts.

Those shifts, he said, include the Carney government’s new border security bill, C-12, which would limit the ability of individuals who have been in Canada for more than a year to claim asylum.

It also would give the government new authority to cancel or suspend some immigration documents, including permanent resident visas and immigration applications, in what the legislation calls the “public interest.”

“We’re basically regressing into a kind of a bubble. And unfortunately, it’s been pressured by a lot of the right-wing politics against immigration,” Axworthy told The Canadian Press.

“When I was a minister in the government, we pushed back. We said, ‘Here’s what refugees can do. Here’s how we’re going to manage the system effectively.’ We have a basic human rights commitment, and I think we’ve lost that human rights commitment in terms of what we’re doing.”

Axworthy announced his retirement as the chair of the World Refugee and Migration Council on Thursday. It’s a position he’s held since the group’s inception in 2017.

He said while Canada likes to talk about being a welcoming place for newcomers in friendly venues like the United Nations, Ottawa needs to offer more than lip service to the plight of refugees.

Axworthy pointed to a proposal in the federal budget to charge refugees and asylum claimants what Ottawa calls a “modest co-pay” for dental work and prescription drugs provided through the Interim Federal Health Program.

“All you’re saying is, ‘We don’t want you to come, and we’re going to make it hard for you to get here.’ I mean, refugees don’t come with a bank account at Chase Morgan,” Axworthy said, adding that migrants are being driven from their homes by “conflicts, natural disasters, corruption.”

Axworthy said it “disturbs” him that Canada is “maybe not so slowly” backtracking on promises it made under the UN Refugee Convention. Among other things, Canada committed to not return refugees to countries where they may face serious threats to their lives or freedom.

To stand by that principle, Axworthy said, Canada needs to terminate the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States.

Under that agreement — which assumes that both the U.S. and Canada are “safe countries” for refugees — people must claim asylum in whichever country they get to first, meaning they can’t leave the U.S. to seek refugee status in Canada.

“The United States no longer has the values we do,” Axworthy said. “We always assume that we would have a similar kind of view of the basic rights of people. Well, with (U.S. President Donald) Trump and company, we’ve seen mass deportations and no appeals and their refugee programs are reduced.”

Axworthy cited a Sept. 30 memo Trump issued saying the U.S. would only accept 7,500 refugees — down from the previous cap of 125,000 under President Joe Biden — and would prioritize white South Africans claiming racial discrimination.

Trump has repeatedly cited widely discredited claims of “white genocide” and persecution of South African farmers and announced he would boycott the G20 summit in South Africa later this month in response.

The South African government says the claims of racial persecution are baseless.

“I think as Canadians, we have so little in common in what (Trump is) doing that we should just simply say, ‘Thanks very much. We’re going to look after our own refugee system,’” Axworthy said.

Axworthy spent more than five years of his long political career as immigration minister — first in the government of prime minister Pierre Trudeau in the 1980s and then under prime minister Jean Chrétien in the 1990s.

The government is seeking to reduce the number of permanent residents it admits from annual highs of half a million people in recent years. Axworthy said its current approach is too reactive.

“We’ve been kind of going whack-a-mole on immigration. There hasn’t been a coherent set (of policies) based upon serious participation and parliamentary involvement. And it’s such a crucial part of what the world is going through right now,” he said.

“I think (Prime Minister Mark) Carney wants to build better. You build better in part by making sure that your fundamental rights of people, and immigration itself, is an effective, fair policy and isn’t simply being pushed and pulled by different interest groups.”

Axworthy said the government should get back to explaining to Canadians how immigration benefits the country and ensuring the rules governing the system are fair and understandable.

“You shouldn’t try to fix an airplane when it’s flying, and I think we’re tinkering. There’s been so many changes over the last three or four years that the system is not really connected or integrated,” he said.

“Justin Trudeau’s government made a big mistake buying into the kind of business-oriented view that we just needed more and more people. But nobody talked about the fact that was going to impact housing and health and education. And so, as a result, we found ourselves with backlogs.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2025.

David Baxter, The Canadian Press