Should Canada remove the United States from the Safe Third Country Act?

In a piece for the Investigative Journal Bureau’s Insights section, Julia Chapman criticizes the fact that Canada has not repealed the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), a bilateral accord mandating that refugee claimants must seek asylum in the first safe country of their arrival (i.e., Canada or the United States). However, given the heightened violence that immigrants and refugees face in the U.S., Chapman calls the U.S. into question as an eligible “safe country” for refugees fleeing persecution. Chapman points out that maintaining the SCTA violates Canada’s humanitarian responsibilities, explaining that our government is both legally and morally obligated to protect refugees and immigrants.

Julia Chapman is a candidate in the Master of Public Policy program at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Chapman has previously conducted comparative research on international refugee systems and currently works in federal policy at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada.

Citation

Chapman, J. (2026). Should Canada remove the United States from the Safe Third Country Act? International Journalism Bureau Insights. https://ijb.utoronto.ca/ijb-updates/insights-should-canada-remove-the-united-states-from-the-safe-third-country-act/

Excerpt

Through the SCTA, Canada effectively outsources its obligations. The SCTA operates within this network of greater economic selection and demographic planning, preventing unaccounted and non-selected asylum seekers from settling here by accepting U.S. border management and immigration policies.

Canada can live up to our humanitarian values by suspending the STCA pending a transparent reassessment of U.S. asylum conditions and repealing or amending provisions in C-12 that undermine due process.  

Canada must fundamentally align its immigration planning framework with international refugee obligations. To continue to outsource border management to the United States carries moral and legal consequences that Canada can no longer afford to ignore.