The pending deportation of British Columbia, Canada climate activist Zain Haq, scheduled for last Sunday, was called off last week, according to his lawyer Randall Cohn. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) contacted Haq to confirm he would not face a removal order.
Haq’s upbringing was in Pakistan before he arrived in Canada on a student visa. However, his visa was revoked following charges linked to protests that caused traffic disruptions in BC’s Lower Mainland. The court learned about Haq’s association with groups like Extinction Rebellion, Stop Fracking Around, and Save Old Growth, the latter being one he helped establish. His legal troubles resulted in guilty pleas for five mischief charges and one breach of undertaking, leading to a sentence of seven days in jail and two months of house arrest last year.
Haq’s case gained attention due to his involvement in climate activism and subsequent legal challenges regarding his study permit’s validity.
Zain Haq’s background adds a layer of context to his activism and legal challenges. Born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2001, Haq experienced firsthand the devastating effects of climate-related disasters, including floods and heatwaves, during his early years. These experiences shaped his determination to address climate change as a civil duty. In 2019, Haq came to Canada to pursue studies at Simon Fraser University, where he quickly became involved in environmental activism. His actions were not limited to protests; he also engaged in impactful advocacy efforts, such as pressuring SFU to divest from fossil fuels.
Despite the Federal Court dismissing an application to stay Haq’s deportation earlier, the recent cancellation reflects potential government reconsideration, possibly influenced by public support and advocacy efforts.
In a comment to JURIST, Randall Cohn said:
The legal question is about the use of discretion. It is not about rights, technically. It is about values. So, in Canada, there are several key points in this process where decisionmakers have discretion to either make this worse for a person—to punish them to the maximum extent of the law—or to not do that. [Canada] has a choice available to them under the law to make different choices about how they prosecute, and different choices about their immigration enforcement priorities, it is a system with an incredibly large backlog, and the fact that they were as determined to … get him out of Canada was a real perversion of priorities.
What we need to be saying to our government is that you should not be in the business of finding additional ways to punish activist leaders, especially activist leaders so principally committed to non-violence. And ultimately, the federal government of Canada, under the leadership of the Liberals, recognized it would be a bad look for them to support this deportation while also suggesting that they understand the depths and seriousness of the climate crisis and the sense of despair and hopelessness that young people have about it.
