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Feb 12, 2025
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VANCOUVER — A British Columbia climate activist facing deportation from Canada may still be allowed to stay in the country if the immigration minister steps in, but otherwise he’s preparing to be returned to Pakistan Sunday.
Zain Haq said he was packing his bags Saturday morning with a plan to report to the Vancouver airport in the evening, believing his removal from Canada was “certain” without ministerial intervention.
“My wife is trying her best to still try and get a ministerial intervention because this is the only place she knows and this is the only place we’ve had a life together before,” Haq said in an interview Saturday.
Haq, who first came to Canada on a student visa, said he’s due to catch a flight to Toronto before he is set to be sent back to Pakistan, after the Federal Court of Canada shot down a last-ditch effort to delay his removal on Thursday.
He said he and his Canadian wife, Sophia Papp, woke up in “disbelief” as they faced the prospect of being forced out of the country after what the couple describes as a bureaucratic snafu derailed a spousal application for his permanent residency.
“Unless we hear otherwise, it looks like it may very well happen, which is really devastating,” Papp said. “Our lives are put on hold and I feel like I’m losing half of myself.”
She said they have been left to “essentially beg” Immigration Minister Marc Miller to stop the deportation, after Haq was granted a ministerial stay that temporarily allowed him to stay last spring.
A representative of the minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Haq, who co-founded the activist group Save Old Growth as an international student, pleaded guilty to five charges of mischief in 2023 over his role in environmental protests that blocked roadways in 2021 and 2022.
He was granted a temporary permit to stay in Canada last April, but Haq said his application to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds was denied even though his offences were non-violent and he and Papp pose no risk to public safety.
Haq said they’re still holding out hope for Miller to halt his deportation, and his lawyer Randall Cohn said Saturday that an intervention was still a possibility.
“Certainly in other matters that I have been involved in, their decision to do that has happened at the 11th hour, we are still holding out hope,” Cohn said.
Cohn said he’s had clients in the past who have found out their removal was cancelled while riding in “an Uber to the airport.”
“The chances of it happening of course diminish with every moment,” he said.
Cohn said the chances of the minister intervening on a weekend were low, and parliament isn’t currently sitting.
But he said Miller has received a “significant’ amount” of information from supporters of Haq’s.
One of those supporters is environmentalist Tzeporah Berman, who said she’s known Haq for several years, believing his climate activism is important at a “critical moment in history where we have such a polarized debate on climate change.”
“Canada’s, you know, supposed to be a place where peaceful dissent and advocacy are protected and not punished,” she said in an interview Saturday.
“There are certainly those in the government that don’t like how outspoken he has been or how successful his organizing has been in raising awareness of bad policies and bad decisions.”
Haq said he has family in Pakistan, but he’s lived in Canada for several years. His wife is a Canadian citizen and he said he’s also close with her family.
His deportation, Haq said, feels like he’s being “split into half.”
“I am hoping that there will be an intervention, but I’m obligated to report to the airport tonight unless anything happens and I’m told that it’s off,” he said.
“So I am preparing to do that. I am packing my bag in accordance with that. But you know, if there’s an intervention, we would be very relieved.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 25, 2025.
Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press