Canada dispatch: Tribunal rules government cannot use national security to delay refugee's case against intelligence service

Pitasanna Shanmugathas is a third-year student at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law. He has been actively following developments in this discrimination case before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

A Canadian Human Rights Tribunal member ruled last week that the government cannot invoke national security laws to indefinitely delay discrimination complaints. The Tribunal decision comes as a victory for a former refugee who says Canada’s Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) exploited and discriminated against him for more than two decades.

Kagusthan Ariaratnam—a Tamil refugee from Sri Lanka who was forced to join a militant group as a child soldier—alleges that CSIS coerced him to work for nine years as an unpaid informant. He also contends that the agency shared his pri