DETENTION STATISTICS 2003 year to date

CIC produces a weekly "detention snapshot," which shows how many people were in immigration detention on a particular day.  In 2003, they have shared figures starting from 9 January 2003 and the latest we have to date is for 20 February 2003.

From these statistics, we can see that on any one day, over the period covered:

– an average of 523 people were in immigration detention in Canada.
– of these, an average of 325 people were in provincial jails and the rest (199) were in immigration holding centres.
– 66% of detainees were in Ontario, 20% in Québec, 3% in the Prairies and Territories,11% in BC/Yukon and less than 1% in the Atlantic.
– despite its immigration detention centre, Ontario specializes in detention in provincial jails, with an average of 238 in jail, compared to 106 in the immigration centre.
– by contrast, in Québec, there is an average of 20 in jails, compared to 86 in the immigration centre.
– the recently opened short-term holding centre in Vancouver is not seeing a lot of business: there has been an average of just 6 people in the centre over the period covered.
– there is not enormous variation in the numbers detained over the period covered: the lowest was on 20 February (497 people detained) and the highest was 11 April (544 people detained).
– there were on average 8 minors in detention, most of them accompanied, but on any day there may have been one unaccompanied minor in detention.
– the highest number of minors in detention was found on 6 February (13 minors) and the lowest on 20 February (2 minors).
– of those detained, an average of 9 were detained for security reasons.
– the security cases are divided between those detained before September 11 and those detained after. According to these statistics, of pre-September cases, there are two people detained on security certificates in Ontario.  Of post-September 11 cases, the statistics show two people on a security certificate in Québec (since 10 January) and a handful identified as security related, but not on a certificate, and apparently mostly not staying long in detention, in Québec, Ontario and Prairies/Territories.

CIC warns us that that these statistics are manually tabulated and may contain inaccuracies.
 

 6 March 2003