Successful Establishment Requirements within Canada’s Refugee Resettlement System: Historic Trajectory and Implications

This article examines the changing role of successful establishment requirements within Canada’s refugee system from 1945 to the present. The trajectory of these requirements is traced through three historic periods: (a) 1945 to 1978, when there was no dedicated refugee stream; (b) 1978 to 2002, when Canada incorporated the Refugee Convention definition; and (c) 2002 to the present, when the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act came into force and an Economic Mobility Pathway Pilot (EMPP) for skilled refugees was introduced. This trajectory demonstrates ongoing tensions between pragmatic and protection considerations in Canada’s resettlement approach, which impact both access to protection and the notion of “refugee” in the context of third country solutions.