I posted on Sunday about the Russian woman in Canada who was denied citizenship because she had denounced Vladimir Putin. I mentioned, but forgot to link to, George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin’s post on the issue. That is now corrected.
The basic story is that Maria Kartasheva was charged by Russian authorities with the offense of disseminating “deliberately false information” about Russia’s military forces. According to Canadian Press reporter Dylan Robinson, “the department [Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada] sent her a letter, saying that her conviction in Russia aligns with a Criminal Code offence in Canada relating to false information.”
Ilya was outraged, as was I. Kartahseva seems like exactly the kind of citizen that Canadians would want. My guess is that the majority of Canadians, if they knew about the issue, would want her. That doesn’t mean that the government would. Canada’s government has been assaulting freedom of speech for a few decades. A relatively recent example is Trudeau’s crackdown on the truckers’ strike. So it should not have come as a total surprise that Canada’s government makes disseminating false information a crime. Robinson doesn’t mention the specific crime. But CBC reporter Matthew Kupfer does lay it out here, writing:
According to a December letter from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the crime she committed in Russia “would equate to false information under subsection 372(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada.”
Originally enacted in 1985, the Canadian law makes it illegal for individuals to intentionally injure another person or convey false information through telecommunication means.
Note that the key is not whether she is innocent. It appears that information she disseminated was true. But she was tried, convicted, and sentenced by a Russian court in absentia. So if the law were to be followed, it does appear that Kartasheva should have been denied Canadian citizenship.
There’s now good news. The Canadian government has relented. Ilya celebrated that in a post yesterday. I celebrate it also.
Here’s what I found striking, though. Ilya Somin is a noted legal scholar who posts regularly on “The Volokh Conspiracy.” Usually, he makes a legal argument. This time he didn’t. Instead he wrote:
I am happy that sanity prevailed in this case. But it’s ridiculous the issue was ever in doubt in the first place. Speaking out against horrific war crimes is surely not the kind of “crime” that can ever justify denial of citizenship or deportation from any liberal democracy worthy of the name.
It’s a good argument, but not a good legal argument. What it shows, sadly, given that I’m a dual citizen of Canada and the United States, is that Canada is no longer a “liberal democracy worthy of the name.”
Ilya adds:
Since the start of the conflict, I have been making the case that the US and other Western nations—including Canada – should open their doors to Russians fleeing Vladimir Putin’s increasingly repressive regime. Even for those who wouldn’t go as far in this direction as I advocate, the case of a dissenter facing imprisonment for speaking out against Putin’s war war should be a no-brainer.
I think this argument is harder for Ilya to make than for me to make. He’s a noted legal scholar who generally favors following the law. I’m not.
I agree with him, though, that Canada and the United States and other Western countries should open their doors to people fleeing repression in Russia. I’ll up the ante. They should also open their doors to people fleeing repression (such as the draft) in Ukraine.
READER COMMENTS
steve
Jan 10 2024 at 4:54pm
Not surprised. I think these bad decisions are usually made by some lower level person following some strict interpretation of the law, the letter and not the spirit. Those usually get reversed.
“A relatively recent example is Trudeau’s crackdown on the truckers’ strike. ”
So there should be no limits on how long protestors should be able to block a city center, or any area for that matter?
Steve
Peter
Jan 10 2024 at 5:05pm
It’s public property so no. If they were illegally parking, standing, or driving under the speed limit, feel free to ticket them and tow after appropriate notification but otherwise they are free to legally use the road the same as anyone else
steve
Jan 10 2024 at 9:10pm
So if I want to get a bunch of people to park on I-95 and stop traffic I should be able to do that as long as I want? It is public property. In Canada the tow truck operators were afraid to tow so it never got done. SO park a bunch of trucks on I-95, threaten tow truck owners with retaliation and stay there forever. Get a few tickets but why pay them?
Steve
Peter
Jan 11 2024 at 1:48am
Yeah, that’s the way it works, they got just as much right to drive slow as you do. I’m “parked” on the freeway two hours one way each day on my 6 mile commute. Not sure why I have the right to park but they don’t. If police don’t want to enforce traffic laws, that’s on them. Guess you need to take a side road, work at home / walk, or a tollway.
David Henderson
Jan 10 2024 at 6:47pm
You write:
There should be limits. But they shouldn’t include cutting off access to bank accounts.
Ahmed Fares
Jan 10 2024 at 6:50pm
I can’t say whether it was deliberate or not, but she was spreading false information about the Bucha massacre, which was committed by the Ukrainians. Examine the evidence and make up your own mind.
The following is from Sputnik Globe, but facts are facts. Many other sites and forums have reported the same information:
https://sputnikglobe.com/20220405/msms-bucha-tall-tale-1094504500.html
Matthias
Jan 11 2024 at 8:20am
If you are so sure about this version of events and have the sources to back them up, please update the Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre
Btw, satellite and other imagery is available for the relevant dates. So you can check whether the bodies were already laying there earlier.
Ahmed Fares
Jan 11 2024 at 2:08pm
https://www.aftermath.com/content/human-decomposition/
If you look at that first pic on the Wikipedia page you linked to, you’ll notice there is no bloat on the fingers and the nails are still there. Not what you’d expect from bodies that have been laying there for weeks.
As an aside, I don’t know how to edit Wikipedia, but if I did, I suspect that someone would come after and change what I wrote. I think that’s how Wikipedia works.
Here’s another quote from a more neutral site:
https://www.india.com/opinion/finding-the-real-butcher-of-bucha-5326810/
Anonymous
Jan 12 2024 at 3:57pm
The Wikipedia entry is comprehensive and conclusive. Your argument is like those I have heard from deniers of the moon landing. “So what if the killings were caught on drone video and satellite images and corroborated by eyewitnesses and communications by the perpetrators, the bodies don’t look quite the way I would expect them to based on Internet research about body decomposition so it must all be fake!!”
Philo
Jan 11 2024 at 1:20am
There is plenty of repression all around the world, not just in Russia and Ukraine. It is too bad that the U.S. does not accept refugees from repression more freely.
Monte
Jan 11 2024 at 10:47am
Isn’t that exactly what the Biden Administration has been doing for the past 3 years at our southern border? Most are simply seeking a better life, not asylum due to repression, which means nothing if they lack permission to enter.
Peter
Jan 11 2024 at 1:55am
I’m not impartial to letting them in to Canada but equally I get the why and the answer has nothing to do with the specific crime they committed but more along “being convicted of any crime shows you are a rule breaker hence will break our rules too”. As a soon to be felon myself, it’s BS but I get the logic and it’s one many, if not most, countries follow as I have learned recently in person. It’s really difficult to travel, much less immigrate, with a criminal conviction where you have to disclose or provide a citizen nation criminal check document regardless of the specific crime or the legitimateness of the courts / due process.
It’s just a hard approval for risk adverse bureaucrats to sign off on given public backlash about letting criminals in. The public is indifferent to the crime itself hence cases like this.
Comments are closed.