Conservatives say courts should not consider the immigration status of convicted criminals when handing down sentences, warning that doing so would create a “two-tier” system.
The statement comes after a recent court ruling that spared prison time for a convicted criminal to reduce his risk of deportation.
“Non-citizens convicted of a crime should face the same consequences as Canadian citizens, and when they are convicted of serious crimes, they should be deported,” Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, her party’s immigration critic, said in an Aug. 26 statement.
Last week, the British Columbia Court of Appeal ruled that a lower court had erred in giving a sentence that was “too lenient” to a non-citizen convicted of aggravated assault and possession of a weapon so he could be spared deportation….