Canada's immigration system continues to demonstrate alarming flexibility when dealing with non-citizens convicted of serious crimes, allowing repeated offenders to exploit legal loopholes and delay their removal from the country.
The Case of Zavion Forde
Zavion Forde, a Jamaican national and Canadian permanent resident, was approximately 22 years old when he impregnated his 13-year-old stepsister in 2007. The victim stated he forced himself onto her, while Forde claimed he didn't remember the incident. In 2008, he was convicted of sexual interference and received a sentence of five-and-a-half months.
This conviction should have ended Forde's time in Canada, as his crime qualified as serious criminality under immigration law, rendering him legally inadmissible. However, immigration officials cancelled his deportation, giving him another chance to remain in the country.
Repeated Offenses and Legal Battles
Despite this second opportunity, Forde continued to commit crimes, including domestic violence. By 2018, he was still fighting his deportation through the court system. During this period, he had fathered three Canadian children—the oldest being the child conceived through the criminal act with his stepsister.
Forde used his children as grounds to argue against returning to Jamaica. Although he ultimately lost his final appeal, his current status remains uncertain. The Canada Border Services Agency maintains that deportation status of criminals is private information, preventing public accountability that would otherwise be available through court dockets.
Systemic Failures in Canadian Immigration
Canada's approach to criminal deportation reveals significant weaknesses in enforcement. The country only considers crimes with maximum sentences of 10 years or greater, or cases where the actual sentence exceeded six months, as serious criminality warranting potential deportation of permanent residents.
This threshold creates what's known as immigration discounts in sentencing, where judges may deliberately sentence permanent residents below the six-month mark to help them avoid deportation consequences.
Even when courts do sentence foreign offenders to the point of reaching serious criminality status, the deportation process remains vulnerable to interruption. One common method involves convincing judges to pause removal orders and place offenders on probation-like arrangements, giving them time to demonstrate rehabilitation and worthiness to remain in Canadian society.
This exact mechanism allowed Forde to stay in Canada after his sexual assault conviction. In 2009, the Immigration and Refugee Board's tribunal initially ordered his deportation, but on appeal in 2010, adjudicator Hazelyn Ross decided to let him remain despite his four convictions at the time.
Ross, who obtained her law degree in Barbados and previously worked as an Ontario government lawyer on race relations policy, paused Forde's deportation for five years and imposed at least 16 conditions. By 2016, Forde had violated six of those conditions, demonstrating the ineffectiveness of this approach with repeat offenders.
The pattern evident in Forde's case reflects broader concerns about Canada's immigration enforcement, where clear boundaries are replaced with flexible standards that serious criminals can repeatedly manipulate to avoid consequences for their actions.
