‘A wonderful human being’: Elizabeth May calls on government to protect B.C. climate activist facing deportation

Zain Haq (left) and Sophie Papp are seen in a handout image. (Credit: LauraS)

The leader of the federal Green Party is calling on the government to protect a B.C. climate activist who is once again facing deportation for his role in a series of disruptive protests.

Zain Haq was arrested multiple times for helping to block traffic with the groups Extinction Rebellion, Stop Fracking Around and Save Old Growth, and pleaded guilty to five counts of mischief and one count of breaching an undertaking in 2023.

He is currently scheduled to be removed from the country on Saturday.

Speaking in support of the young activist, Elizabeth May noted that she, too, was arrested and charged in connection with a protest against the Trans Mountain pipeline in 2018, and that former Liberal interim leader Bob Rae was similarly arrested while protesting the building of a logging road in 1989.

“Non-violent civil disobedience is part of a range of rights that includes our right of free speech, and (is) part of a Canadian tradition,” May said Monday.

“It’s not all that infrequent that sitting members of parliament get arrested, or that someone who’s arrested goes on to be Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations.”

She also called Haq “a wonderful human being,” and said she would “trust him with my life.”

Haq grew up in Pakistan before coming to Canada in 2019 on a student visa, which was revoked in light of his legal trouble.

The 24-year-old said being deported would create “serious hardship” for him and his wife, Canadian climate activist Sophie Papp, and argued it would not “serve the public safety of Canada.”

“Los Angeles is burning and many parts of California are burning, and that is a true public safety issue,” Haq said, speaking alongside May.

“When people look back at history, they’re going to wonder what Canada was doing when cities were burning because of the climate crisis. If it looks like they were deporting climate activists, then history won’t be kind, in my opinion.”

The government granted Haq a six-month temporary resident permit in April 2024 – days before he was scheduled to be deported by the Canada Border Services Agency – so he could await the outcome of a permanent residency application sponsored by Papp.

But the couple said they were told by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in October that their application was lost, meaning Haq could not obtain another six-month permit.

The CBSA then re-instated Haq’s removal order, something the Green Party blamed on “bureaucratic failings” within the IIRC.

Lawyer Randall Cohn, who is representing Haq, noted that the order deems his client inadmissible for criminality under the Immigration Refugee Protection Act, but not serious criminality.

“The crimes that Zain has been convicted of … cannot constitute serious criminality under the law,” Cohn said Monday.

The lawyer said the distinction was important as “some parties have attempted to malign” Haq’s character while criticizing the government for intervening in his deportation last year.