Simon Wallace

PhD Candidate
Simon Wallace photo
Dissertation Title
Banished from Canada: the deportation of de facto citizens
Supervisor

Research

Permanent residence is, short of citizenship, the most secure form of Canadian immigration status: a permanent resident enjoys rights to live, work, and study in Canada and can only be deported in rare and grave circumstances. The most common of those circumstances is criminality. This dissertation looks to answer empirical and conceptual questions about the deportation of permanent residents for criminality: who is deported? For what type of (mis)conduct? What connections do deportees have to Canada and to the place they are being sent? What do these deportations say about how membership in Canadian society is conceived of? A problem of scale drives methodological choices in the deportation space. Hundreds of thousands of people are deported annually from the United States and the EU. Most qualitative research is therefore interview-based, doctrinal, or observational: comprehensive analysis is difficult because there are just too many cases. This study confronts this challenge by focussing on a manageable yet comprehensive dataset. In 2019, approximately 15,000 people were deported from Canada, most after losing a refugee claim. I will study the casefiles of a small subset of that group: the people ordered deported for criminality, despite their permanent resident status.

Education

2015: JD - Osgoode Hall Law School

2010: MA - Trent University

2008: BA - Trent University

Teaching Experience

Instructor, Enforcement - Inadmissibility, Detention and Removal - Queen's University (2021)

Instructor, Ethics and Professionalism - Lincoln Alexander School of Law (2021)

Teaching Assistant, Ethical Lawyering in a Global Community - Osgoode Hall Law School, York University (2020-2021, 2021-2022)

Instructor, Legal Research Methods - Trent University (2018)

Professional Experience

Researcher - Centre for Refugee Studies, York University (2020 - )

Lawyer - Refugee Law Office, Legal Aid Ontario (2019-2020)

Lawyer - McCarten Wallace Litigation (2016-2019)

Awards
  • Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2021)
  • Newton Rowell Scholarship (2021)
  • Nathanson Centre Fellowship (2020)
  • John W Grahm Fellowship (2020)
  • Fredrick Zemans Prize in Poverty Law (2014)
  • Judith Wahl Prize in Law and Psychiatry (2014)
  • Harry R Rose Prize in Criminal Law (2013)
Publications
  • Simon Wallace, “Untangling Deportation Law from National Security: the pandemic calls for a softer touch” in Leah West, Thomas Juneau and Amarnath Amarasingam eds., Stress Tested: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Canadian National Security (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2021) 231.
  • Simon Wallace, Benjamin Berger, and Sean Rehaag, “Immigration Detention meets Evidence Law: a discussion paper,” Prepared for Fact-Finding in Immigration Detention Reviews: Evidence Law meets Administrative Law (Osgoode Hall Law School, 2021): https://ssrn.com/abstract=3915791.
  • Simon Wallace, “Deleted Emails, Fraudulent Documents, and Maximum-Security Prisons: A Canadian Case Shows the Illiberalism of Deportation,” Border Criminologies Blog (Faculty of Law, University of Oxford), 14 Dec 2020: .
  • _____, “Making principled objections to the admission of hearsay evidence before the Immigration Division,” Paper prepared for the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Immigration Law Summit, November 28, 2018. [Professional publication]
  • _____, “Friend” in Kelly Fritsch, Clare O’Connor and AK Thompson, eds, Keywords for Radicals (California: AK Press, 2016), 159.
  • _____, “Gun Control in Canada” in Jean Manore and Dale Miner, eds. The Culture of Hunting in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 211.
Presentation
  • “Immigration Detention Reviews: Lessons from Psychology and Psychiatry,” Centre for Refugee Studies Seminar Series, York University (2021).
  • “Deporting people for engaging in organized crime: Canada targets people who commit poverty-based crimes,” Global Borderlands: Getting to the Core Crimmigration, Leiden University (2021).
  • “The Coercive Turn in Canadian Immigration Law: Looking for the First Immigration Detention,” Law and Impact: Graduate Law Research Transition Conference, Dalhousie University (2021).
  • “The first security certificate: the deportation of ‘The Hooded Bandit,’” Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers—Osgoode Hall Law School (2021).
  • “The COVID-19 Pandemic and Deportations,” Centre for International Policy Studies, National Security Policy Network, and by the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (2021).
  • “The continuous journey and making the Canadian-American border,” Law’s Topologies, Osgoode Hall Law School (2021).
  • “Immigration Detention law and best advocacy practices,” Refugee Lawyers’ Association Educational Event (2019).
  • “Habeas Corpus Best Practices,” (moderator) Asper Centre’s Immigration Detention Symposium, University of Toronto (2019).
  • “The Parkdale Rent Strike” Red Talks (2017).