ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2013 ruling in Ezokola v Canada. The case is important because it changed the law in Canada, and because it has the potential to lead to change elsewhere as well. But it is also important because of the fulcrum position that it occupies in the ongoing tug of war between refugee advocates and those who assert that migration, and migrants themselves, are often tainted with criminality. The chapter considers how the moral core of refugee protection acts as a double-edged sword in contemporary debates about migration and crime. Inadmissibility is a set of criteria about who is barred from admittance to Canada in any immigration category. The Supreme Court of Canada stated that a legal doctrine which stretched as far as ‘complicity by association’ was out of line with international standards for refugee law, and with basic principles of international treaty interpretation.
