Earlier this week, Prime Minister Mark Carney and MPs from other political parties gathered to raise the Pride flag on Parliament Hill.
But an advocacy group that helps LGBTQ refugees come to Canada and the United States says the federal government’s new border law puts people at risk of being sent back to countries where they face persecution.
Devon Matthews, chief program officer at Rainbow Railroad, said her organization is concerned about its working relationship with Ottawa as the federal government works to reduce the number of refugees it accepts and cuts the organization’s funding.
She said she is also concerned about a new law that requires asylum claims to be submitted within a year of an applicant first arriving in Canada.
“It has nothing to do with why someone might wait or why someone doesn’t meet the one-year bar,” Matthews told The Canadian Press.
“It’s really just a technical eligibility requirement that doesn’t really serve to give the person the opportunity to talk about the complexities of why they might have to wait.”
A former international student from the Middle East who lived as an openly gay man in Canada is among those left in limbo by the new law.
The former student told The Canadian Press that he applied for asylum after discovering photos of his time here in Canada once he returned to his home country, putting his safety at risk.
But he said that because he studied in Canada for two-and-a-half years starting in 2022, he was told his asylum claim was ineligible under the new border law, C-12.
The Canadian Press agreed not to mention his name or the name of his country of origin because of the dangers faced by his family members who are still there.
“I was supporting the LGBTQ community and was involved in a lot of events and some stories from social media that trickled down to my community there,” he said.
“So some incidents happened and… some pictures were in the hands of bad people and they threatened to report me to the police and beat me up. So it happened more than once, and when it happened the last time I felt like I couldn’t live like this and I would live in fear.”
Many Middle Eastern countries have morality laws that punish gay people with imprisonment. The asylum seeker said that his family will also face social and economic repercussions due to his orientation.
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“When you are discovered as an LGBT person, that’s it, that’s the end of your life. You can’t work, you can be arrested in your home,” he said. “And of course it is a scandal for the family, because it is unacceptable.
“So I ran because if that happened, I would spend my life in prison. Or even if they didn’t put me in prison for that long, that’s all my career is, that’s all my life is.”
He said his asylum application was going smoothly and he was approved for file review — a less intensive screening for low-risk asylum applications.
But when C-12 was passed earlier this year, he became one of about 30,000 people who received letters saying their asylum claim might not be eligible because they first entered Canada more than a year before submitting their application.
The one-year rule applies to refugee applications filed on or after June 3, 2025, and retroactively to first arrivals on or after June 24, 2020.
While asylum claims by people in this situation will not be sent to the Immigration and Refugee Board for review, they are still eligible for a pre-removal risk assessment, or PRRA. Pre-removal risk assessment has a historically low approval rate because it tends to be the primary appeal for claims denied at the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB).
The pre-deportation risk assessment process is mainly paper based but interviews can be requested if the employee needs more information.
Immigration Minister Lina Diab told a Senate committee hearing last February that when it’s clear that people should be able to stay in Canada based on documented evidence, “they get a ‘yes’ right away.”
The government said it introduced the one-year rule in part because some people were applying for asylum in order to stay in Canada after their temporary visas expired.
Diab told the Senate committee that 37% of asylum applications submitted between June 3, 2025 and October 31, 2025 — nearly 19,000 documents — would be deemed ineligible under the one-year rule.
Susie Newing, the former Middle Eastern student’s lawyer, said her client’s ineligibility is being challenged in court on constitutional grounds arguing that he has the right to an oral hearing — something not guaranteed in the pre-removal risk assessment process — and anti-discrimination provisions.
She said there are a variety of reasons why someone from the LGBTQ+ community might not file an asylum claim within a year of first arriving in Canada.
“For example, they may have come to Canada before identifying, expressing or coming to terms with their sexuality, and then they start expressing that here. This may not necessarily happen within one year of them coming to Canada,” Newing said.
“They may have known (their orientation) all along, but they were able to hide it in their country of origin. And so the one-year ban essentially dictates the timing of disclosure to their family members, because that’s often when the risk materializes… when individuals disclose their family members when they’re here in Canada.”
Many federal court appeals of refugee claims deemed ineligible under the new law have been referred for file review, so the judge is expected to rule broadly on the constitutionality of the one-year rule.
An asylum seeker from the Middle East will now have to wait for a pre-removal risk assessment or court decision to see if they will be allowed to remain in Canada.
Even if he had been allowed to stay, his confidence in Canada would have been shaken, he said.
“Now I feel like I’ve been attacked by everyone, by the government, by the Canadian people, and they just want people to leave,” he said.
“By kicking these people out, you’re killing them because they’re not going to come back to be happy and well and everything. You’re driving them to their deaths.”
Matthews said Rainbow Railroad saw its highest number of requests for assistance ever in 2025 — more than 20,000, a 51 percent increase from 2024. She said the organization is on track to receive more requests for assistance this year.
Rainbow Railroad is considering increasing its political activity in response, Matthews said.
