Strengthening Canada's Immigration System and Borders Act

This bill, formally called the Strengthening Canada's Immigration System and Borders Act, makes wide-ranging changes across border security, immigration, drug enforcement, and financial crime law. It requires bridge, tunnel, and airport operators to keep providing free facilities to border officers, and gives officers new powers to inspect goods being exported. It creates a faster process for Health Canada to temporarily list dangerous chemicals used to make illegal drugs, and confirms that police can be legally exempted from certain drug-related charges while conducting lawful undercover investigations. It also shifts responsibility for the coast guard from the Fisheries Minister to the Defence Minister and expands the coast guard's role to include security and intelligence-gathering.

On immigration and refugees, the bill makes significant changes to how asylum claims are handled inside Canada. It scraps the "designated countries of origin" list, gives the Immigration Minister more power to specify what documents claimants must provide, and allows claims to be declared abandoned or withdrawn earlier in the process, including in some cases before they even reach the Immigration and Refugee Board. Refugee claims cannot proceed if the claimant is not physically in Canada. The government also gains new powers to pause or cancel visa and permit applications, or cancel/suspend existing documents like visas and permits, whenever it decides this serves the "public interest" (for reasons such as fraud, public health, safety, or national security), with reporting requirements to Parliament. Two new categories make asylum claims ineligible: claiming more than a year after entering Canada, or crossing into Canada between official border points along the Canada-U.S. border after a certain deadline. The bill also allows more sharing of individuals' personal immigration and citizenship information between government departments and agencies.

On money laundering and terrorist financing, the bill raises maximum fines and penalties, and replaces the voluntary compliance-agreement system with a mandatory one: businesses caught violating the law must now sign a compliance agreement with Canada's financial intelligence agency (FINTRAC) or face a compliance order, with further penalties for ignoring that order. More types of businesses will have to register with FINTRAC, and FINTRAC can share certain information with Canada's elections watchdog.

Finally, the bill updates the national sex offender registry, changing what offenders must report and when, letting border officers share information about offenders' travel with police, and allowing broader sharing of registry information when it could help prevent or investigate sexual crimes. A parliamentary committee must review how all these changes are working five years after the law takes effect.

This bill amends twelve federal statutes covering customs, drug scheduling, coast guard responsibilities, immigration/refugee processing, anti-money-laundering enforcement, and sex offender registration, creating new discretionary powers for ministers, the Governor in Council, and officials in each area.

• Border and export access — CBSA officers gain a right to enter premises (not dwellings without consent or a warrant) to inspect goods destined for export, and owners/operators of bridges, tunnels, airports and warehouses must provide facilities free of charge for CBSA purposes.
• Drug scheduling — The Minister of Health may add or remove precursor chemicals from Schedule V by order, without the normal regulatory process, and the Governor in Council may exempt police and military police from Criminal Code inchoate offences (conspiracy, attempt, accessory, counselling) during lawful drug investigations.
• Coast guard and security — Responsibility for coast guard services moves from the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to the Minister of National Defence, whose mandate now explicitly includes security patrols and the collection, analysis and disclosure of information or intelligence, with no stated limit on this power.
• Immigration information sharing — The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration may disclose personal information within the department and to other federal/provincial bodies under written agreements, subject to regulations not yet written; further disclosure rules for the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act are also left to future regulation.
• Asylum system changes — The bill eliminates the designated countries of origin regime; lets the Minister specify required claim documents; lets the Refugee Protection Division or the Minister deem claims abandoned or withdrawn without referral in specified circumstances; and lets the Governor in Council, on public-interest grounds, suspend, cancel or terminate applications or documents by order, with a report tabled in Parliament after each order but not subject to a vote.
• Financial crime enforcement — FINTRAC gains a mandatory compliance-agreement/compliance-order regime, with penalties reaching $30,000,000 or 3% of global revenue for compliance-order violations, expanded registration duties for regulated businesses, and new authority to disclose information to the Commissioner of Canada Elections; a parliamentary review of the whole Act's effects is required after five years.