"Cosmetics company Lush calls for end of Safe Third Country deal with U.S.", 5 March 2020

Cosmetics company Lush has launched a campaign calling on Canadians to pressure Parliament to back out of ... the Safe Third Country Agreement. The deal largely bans people from seeking asylum at the Canada-U.S. border, on the grounds that both countries are safe and so people must seek refuge where they first arrive... “In upholding the STCA, Canada is complicit in the U.S. administration’s efforts to dismantle vital protections for refugees and undermines Canada’s dedication to human rights,” the company writes in a statement accompanying their Freedom of Movement campaign launched this week... The campaign follows calls from immigration and refugee advocacy groups, lawyers, academics and some politicians for Canada to figure a way out of the deal... Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino has been tasked with “modernizing” the agreement, but with the U.S. in an election year, that’s unlikely to happen soon... Carleen Pickard, ethical campaigns specialist for Lush, said “Organizations in the United States have been documenting the United States as currently not a safe country for migrants to be in... so why do we continue to hold the United States as a safe country is a question we wanted to bring to customers, and an action point we know we could give them.”