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A country that doesn’t expend large amounts of energy in the pursuit of an admirable good might be forgiven. Far less excusable is a country’s failure to simply stop doing something pernicious.

The Canadian government may not resettle another 25,000 Syrian refugees in 2017, or the year after that, or the year after that. It might disappoint many Canadians, but even if the difficulty of an important undertaking isn’t sufficient reason to forego it, difficulty is at least a reason. Canada could easily, however, stop habitually detaining immigrants and refugees, including children. There is no reason not to quit.

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Every year, Canada throws a large town’s worth of migrants in maximum- and medium-security prisons and in prison-like “holding centres.” It held 7,300 people in 2013 and 8,500 in 2014, on average for a few weeks. It can jail a child. It can jail her for as long as it likes. It decrees that under certain circumstances, it must jail her. And, in a fun twist on an old standard, it need not recognize her as “innocent until proven guilty” — she is charged with no crime, after all — but can force her to prove that she deserves to be released from her cell.