A Canadian federal opposition party leader has called on Mark Carney’s government to block the latest data-sharing deal between US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Canadian media company Thomson Reuters.
Avi Lewis, the federal leader of the New Democratic party (NDP), demanded on Tuesday that Ottawa address the contract and further restrict Canadian corporations from doing business with ICE, after Canada’s National Observer news website reported on the deal.
“My blood ran cold when I read about this development,” he added in a statement to the Guardian. “Complicity between Canadian corporations and ICE should absolutely be illegal.”
Under the US$۱۲۵m (£۹۴m) deal, ICE will pay the technology and content conglomerate to access its Clear database – which includes property records, social media and geolocation information – in order to identify “voter fraud” and “immigration fraud”, according to reports.
In a procurement document obtained by ۴۰۴ Media, Thomson Reuters says it is the only company that allows ICE to have access to the “continuous monitoring” of millions of people.
Thomson Reuters’ contracts with ICE date back to ۲۰۱۵, when it first began providing US officials with access to Clear in order to track people for deportation. Critics have long alleged that the databases were being used to facilitate human rights abuses.
The latest contract, however, is the first to state that Clear software will be used to support the Trump administration’s objectives of addressing supposed “voter fraud”.
In a recent primetime television address, the president repeated false claims about the supposed fallibility of the ۲۰۲۰ US presidential election results, alleging voter fraud, noncitizen voting and a host of other misleading or incorrect statements. Election officials from across the political spectrum lambasted the speech and reasserted the reliability of US elections.
Thomson Reuters is owned by the Woodbridge Company, a holding company for the Thomson family, frequently described as the richest family in Canada. The media company also owns the news agency Reuters and the Globe and Mail newspaper.
A spokesperson for Thomson Reuters said it did not comment on customer contracts, and referred to a page on the company’s website about Clear.
The post says there are “misunderstandings” about the tool, and that it is licensed “exclusively to select businesses, law enforcement and government agencies to help expedite investigative processes in legitimate legal investigations”.
The company emphasises that its “investigative solutions are not surveillance tools”.
Lewis said the federal government should deny export permits to companies selling equipment to ICE, and pull public subsidies or contracts from any companies that have dealings with the agency. In January, the NDP made similar calls after the fatal shootings of two US citizens by ICE in Minneapolis.
“If the Carney government is serious about Canadian economic independence, it should move to block this contract,” Lewis said.
The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Thomson Reuters contract.
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Joel Bakan, a law professor at the University of British Columbia and author of several books on the unethical behaviour of corporations, said the legal framework did exist in Canada to bar companies from working with ICE.
“Companies are not allowed to engage with various rogue regimes, authoritarian regimes, and certainly enemy regimes,” he said. “It’s definitely within the jurisdiction of the government, including the federal government of Canada, to impose various kinds of limitations.”
He pointed to Canada’s Special Economic Measures Act, the country’s primary sanctions law, which can authorise the government to restrict trade in relation to human rights violations. “As a matter of realpolitik, I can’t imagine the federal government invoking this against the US, but it is at least arguable that ICE has been involved in such violations,” he said.
