A former Canadian diplomat says the federal government should adopt Australia’s so-called Pacific Solution for dealing with asylum seekers, a policy that a UBC expert on migration and refugee law considers the “worst” of its kind.

Between 2001 and 2007, boats bound for Australia were diverted to small Pacific islands, where the passengers were confined to camps while their applications for refugee status were processed.

The Australian government is moving to revive the practice, and Martin Collacott believes Canada should follow suit.

During the 1980s, Collacott served as Canada’s high commissioner in Sri Lanka, the country of origin of the 492 Tamils who landed in B.C. onboard the cramped freighter MV Sun Sea on August 13.

Now a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute, a right-wing think tank, Collacott says he doubts the federal government can prevent more waves of boat people from arriving if it doesn’t use the Australian model.

“It means that we would stop them from landing in Canada and take them to a safe place, maybe in a country somewhere else in Central America”¦and still screen all of them, still give them all the chance to come to Canada as refugees, but not face the problem of having a lot of people arrive on our soil,” Collacott told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview.

He asserted that Canada would remain in compliance with its international and legal obligations regarding the treatment of refugee claimants if it were to adopt this policy.

“What the Australians did was this: they said, ”˜We have an international obligation to consider these people’s claims. But what we will not do is let them to land on Australian soil,’ ” he explained. “And the reason for that was in the case of those people that they did not think were genuine refugees, it was very hard to remove them once they were in Australia. There are all sorts of appeals and legal questions [in that situation].”

However, UBC law professor Catherine Dauvergne believes the Australian scheme is a “very bad model to follow”.

“I think it represents the worst standard of practice in the western world,” Dauvergne told the Straight in a phone interview. “I think that it is a breach of international law in both spirit and letter. I believe that it amounts to abrogating protection responsibilities for international human rights.”

The right to a fair hearing that’s guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms extends to refugee claimants present in the country, according to the landmark Singh decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1985.

So far, according to Dauvergne, the government is following the letter of the law in handling the Tamil refugee situation. However, she also noted that Conservative public safety minister Vic Toews has been “a bit irresponsible in terms of inflaming public sentiments”.

Dauvergne was referring to Toews’s suggestion that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam—banned as a terrorist organization in Canada—may have been responsible for arranging the MV Sun Sea’s journey, possibly even charging passengers up to $50,000 each.

Toews has also voiced concern that Tamil Tigers may have joined other asylum seekers onboard, a contention that SFU professor and security expert Andre Gerolymatos says may have some basis.

In a phone interview with the Straight, Gerolymatos said it’s likely that these former guerillas are trying to regroup in countries like Canada, where there is a sizable Tamil population.

The refugee claimants are said to be fleeing from persecution that has occurred following the decisive defeat of the Tamil Tigers by the Sri Lankan military in May 2009.

However, Port Coquitlam resident Bandu Madanayake disputes this rationale. Madanayake belongs to the Sinhalese ethnic group, whose members comprise the majority in Sri Lanka. He’s also the president of the Canadian Association for United Sri Lanka.

Noting that the MV Sun Sea originated in Thailand, Madanayake noted in a phone interview that people are free to come and go from Sri Lanka as they wish. “That means Sri Lanka is a free country,” Madanayake told the Straight.

Like Madanayake, Pretheepan Thavaneetharaja hails from Sri Lanka. But he’s from the northern part of the country, where Tamils fought for an independent state for 26 years.

Thavaneetharaja, who’s the secretary for the Thamil Cultural Society of B.C., believes that many of those who came onboard the MV Sun Sea are genuine refugees who fear for their lives.

“They should be processed according to law,” Thavaneetharaja told the Straight in a phone interview. “They should be heard properly.”