MENTALLY ILL DEPORTED FOR VIOLENT CRIMES

I was quoted in today's National Post.

Blackwell on Health: Man deported for crimes, despite mental illness Posted National Post
Blackwell on Health: Man deported for crimes, despite mental illness

Tom Blackwell Aug 1, 2011 – 10:00 AM ET Last Updated: Jul 29, 2011 5:43 PM ET

Permanent residency status is not permanent for all immigrants; those convicted of serious crimes can be kicked out of the country, even if they arrived many years earlier. But what if the immigrant’s crimes were the result, not of conscious, sane intent, but of psychiatric illness?

Such appears to be the case with Audley Horace Gardner, a Jamaican native with paranoid schizophrenia whose deportation order was confirmed by a Federal Court judge recently. Illness, it turns out, does not exempt non-citizens from the deportation rule.

Mr. Gardner came to Canada 30 years ago at the invitation of his sister. Eight years later, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and in the early 1990s was found not criminally responsible for a violent offence. For a decade, he was treated as an out-patient with anti-psychotic drugs, switching from injections administered by nurses to pills in 2003. Then things took a turn for the worse.

He was evicted from his apartment and his schizophrenic symptoms resurfaced, as he was apparently unable to stay on the drugs. Mr. Gardner moved from homeless shelter to homeless shelter and was eventually convicted in 2005 of stabbing a fellow shelter resident and of two other assaults. He was ordered deported in 2007, with the Immigration Appeal Division later ruling that he posed too great a danger to the Canadian public.

The 48-year-old appealed on humanitarian and compassionate grounds but the government deemed that the risk he presented to the public outweighed the dangers he would face returning to Jamaica, where one expert suggested he would receive inadequate care. Mr. Gardner appealed to the Federal Court. But Justice David Near ruled the decision had been reasonable, and that mental illness does not give permanent residents any greater right to stay in Canada.

The case underlines the perils of immigrants not becoming citizens, and the balance that has to be found in such cases between the public interest and individual rights, said Sergio Karas, a Toronto immigration lawyer. Said Mr. Karas:


This person is obviously mentally ill and needs treatment, but on the other hand, he is a violent offender.