Canada kindly accepted Baskaran Balasooriyan as a refugee when he fled Sri Lanka in 1999 – and he paid us back by amassing more than 20 criminal convictions.
Why in the world was this guy still here?
In 2006, he was ordered deported after being convicted of stealing a car worth over $5,000. He already had other entries on his criminal record by then, including credit card fraud, and even while under the removal order he was found guilty of impaired driving and unlawfully at large.
In 2009, Balasooriyan’s appeal of his deportation was denied because the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada found the chances of his rehabilitation were slim.
How right they were.
So, why was this convicted criminal still in Canada 14 years later while continuing to add to his unenviable record? Only now, Balasooriyan has been convicted of a far more serious crime: the attempted abduction of a 12-year-old girl while he was free on bail facing a domestic assault charge.
The only good news in this enraging story is that at least this sorry excuse for a refugee is now eligible for deportation – again.
Around 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 13, 2023, Nottawasaga OPP responded to a report of an attempted abduction in Treetops Park in New Tecumseth, about 70 km north of Toronto.
A short time later, police arrested Balasooriyan in a 2010 Honda Accord that had been stolen from a repair shop two days earlier. He was charged with four counts, including attempted abduction of someone under 14 and possession over $5000.
The young girl told police an “old man” approached her at the basketball court and began asking questions. He told her he was Tamil, he used to live in Toronto and Brampton but now resided in Barrie, and he was a soccer coach.
He said he’d bought his sister a house nearby and that he had two daughters, one of whom was her age. She and the other kids thought he sounded drunk.
Three times he tried to lure her to his grey car, asking her to come and listen to his music.
“Just come. You’ll like the music,” she said he told her.
After her many refusals, he finally drove off with the music blaring.
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“I knew straight away that, uh, something was obviously going to happen in the car because I’ve heard of those stories, and I’ve had dreams about them. So, I immediately got like the ick,” the frightened girl explained to police.
She testified that she thought the man was going to sexually assault her and she still suffers from nightmares.
Last fall, Ontario Court Justice Angela McLeod convicted the 46-year-old divorced father on all charges. At Balasooriyan’s sentencing hearing, she said the aggravating factors were many, including using a stolen car for his abduction attempt, which “increased the potential risk as the child could have been easily and quickly transported away from the jurisdiction.”
Balasooriyan was also on bail at the time for an alleged crime of violence – domestic assault. While on bail again awaiting trial on those charges, he left his house without his surety and then lied to police.
“The breach was brazen and gives rise to concern about risk to the community,” McLeod wrote.
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The judge refused to reduce his sentence to under six months so he wouldn’t be deported, saying the defence submission of a conditional sentence of 179 days was “wholly inappropriate” considering the seriousness of trying to abduct a child.
“The risk of deportation cannot justify the imposition of an inadequate or artificial sentence, particularly for the purpose of circumventing Parliament’s will on matters of immigration,” McLeod wrote.
Prosecutors asked for 480 days and the judge agreed, though noting the Crown position was “generous, very generous.” With credit for pre-sentence custody, Balasooriyan was now in a time-served position and subject to three years probation. Since his sentence exceeded six months, by law, he should soon be aboard a plane heading out of this country.
But we’d be fools to get our hopes up, of course.
“The crooks are in charge here; they know how to play the system like a fiddle,” immigration lawyer Sergio Karas warns. “He’ll file a stay of removal on humanitarian grounds, fear of persecution, blah, blah, blah. It’s difficult to remove someone who was granted refugee status in Canada.”
“It takes years and years and years,” he added.