REUTERS CANADA: OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada must review its deportation policy in light of a pardon that was granted to a Canadian resident once threatened with deportation and now accused in an alleged al Qaeda plot to derail a passenger train, a government minister said on Friday.
Raed Jaser, one of two men charged in connection with the suspected plot, argued in a 2004 deportation hearing that Canada should not deport him because he was stateless and no country would take him in.
Canada had sought to deport him because he had convictions on several counts of fraud, immigration board documents show.
Jaser was later pardoned, and he then became a permanent resident in Canada, the equivalent to holding a U.S. green card.
"The reality is that he was pardoned, and that repealed his criminal inadmissibility to Canada," Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told reporters. "That raises for me an important policy question. Why should a pardon override criminal inadmissibility?"
"That's what I'm looking at with my officials - to see whether we can make a policy change. It seems to me, I don't care whether you get a pardon or not, if you commit a serious criminal offense in Canada, you should be kicked out - period," Kenney said. » | Randall Palmer | Additional reporting by Allison Martell in Toronto and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Janet Guttsman and Peter Cooney | Friday, April 26, 2013
