Ward Elcock.Fred Chartrand/The Canadian Press
Canada has dispatched its former spy chief to Southeast Asia as a special envoy with a mission to prevent migrant smuggling as the federal government prepares a crackdown to stop more boats of Tamil asylum seekers from sailing to Canada.
Ward Elcock, one-time head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, will travel to Sri Lanka, Thailand and other countries in the region to increase intelligence and police co-operation to thwart networks of smugglers.
And Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, in India on a multicountry tour, has changed travel plans so he can visit Australia next week to study its tough policies aimed at deterring asylum seekers. Australia detains illegal migrants who arrive by boat in camps in the outback and on the remote Christmas Island.
The MV Sun Sea landed on the B.C. coast in August carrying 492 Tamil refugee claimants from Thailand, and government is warning that more may be on the way. The Conservatives have promised legislation to crack down on the practice in the fall.
Many migrant boats are organized by networks in countries such as Thailand or the Philippines, and international policing efforts to disrupt them are key to deterring the trade. Mr. Elcock, CSIS director from 1994 to 2004, will visit those countries to "pursue high-level discussions," about co-operating on interdicting smugglers, Mr. Kenney said.
"This is a dangerous form of exploitation, he said. The MV Sun Sea was unfit for an ocean voyage, he said in a conference call from India: "It was a dangerous vessel for people to be travelling on, let alone 500 people all the way across the Pacific, with limited supplies, in dangerous circumstances."
Government officials are now drawing up broad lists of possible measures, from interdicting boats on the high seas and returning them to stepping up law enforcement efforts and imposing mandatory minimum penalties for smugglers. Penalties of life in prison are already on the books, but charges are rare. Mr. Kenney suggested mandatory minimum sentences are needed.
"Perhaps some of the smugglers are calculating that they'll get away with a slap on the wrist. That would be wrong for them to make such a calculation. We need to send a strong signal," he said. "The government is looking closely at what other jurisdictions have done."
Australia has a history of boat landings, and it is a hot political issue as the number of refugees arriving this way rose by about a quarter in 2010, to just under 4,000.
"We'd like to learn from their experience over the past several years and see if there are practical ways that we can co-operate," Mr. Kenney said.
Australia once diverted migrant boats to Pacific Island neighbours, but now detains the occupants. Prime Minister Julia Gillard has called for boat migrants to diverted for processing in East Timor, with accepted refugees settled in various countries, but East Timor's legislature voted against the idea.