A federal law once championed by Conservatives to crack down on “barbaric cultural practices” will stay on the books for at least another year after immigration officials said they need more time to study whether the issues it targeted are actually happening.Blacklock's Reporter says Tara Lang, a director general at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, told senators the department wants to gather clearer post-pandemic data before repealing the 2015 Zero Tolerance For Barbaric Cultural Practices Act. The law, pushed by former immigration minister Chris Alexander, bars polygamous immigrants from entering Canada and sets 16 as the youngest acceptable age for marriage.“We want to study it to find out if this is actually happening,” Lang testified, saying officials need to review the numbers, analyze trends and consult groups concerned about vulnerability. She said they have solid pre-pandemic data on people deemed inadmissible for polygamy but cannot make reliable comparisons with recent years due to shifting migration flows and backlogs..Parliament passed the bill a decade ago despite fierce criticism, with Liberals long vowing to repeal it. Alexander argued at the time the measure was needed to ensure Canadian values were upheld and that the immigration system didn’t inadvertently enable polygamy, which has been illegal in Canada since 1890.The legislation stirred political controversy that lingered for years. Senators reviewing the deferral said the debate brought back “memories” from one of the country’s more divisive chapters. Alexander’s 2015 election campaign also featured a police tip line for reporting “barbaric cultural practices,” a move he later blamed in part for his defeat..Former Conservative cabinet minister Kellie Leitch, who backed both the bill and the hotline, later said she faced intense harassment, threats and even a break-in during the campaign, calling politics “a rough sport.”The Act has also been cited as a turning point in Canadian politics. Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi told senators in 2023 he didn’t believe the Conservatives behind it were personally Islamophobic, but that they saw political gain in targeting Muslims.Lang said this is the first formal request to delay the repeal, noting the department wants more time to work with outside groups and properly assess the data before making a final decision on whether the law should be scrapped.
