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And yet, for all that, the government does have significant reasons to stand up for the pact. In fact, for several years, the Liberals have actually been lobbying the U.S. to expand the agreement.

As it currently stands the Safe Third Country Agreement only applies at official land border crossings. Most asylum seekers who cross the border anywhere else can still have their claims heard in this country.

Since 2016, that clause has led to a surge in what the government calls “irregular migration.” Thousands of people have walked over the border, most of them at Roxham Road in New York State, and asked for asylum in this country. That push overwhelmed many of the systems Canada has in place for coping with refugee claimants. It also helped contribute to a significant uptick in anti-refugee sentiment in some parts of the country.

Scrapping the agreement altogether, or standing by as it gets struck down in court, could lead to another surge in asylum seekers, just as the government is beginning to show signs of digging out from under the last one.

In court Monday, a team of five government lawyers sat quietly as the applicants laid out their case. Even by the generally dry standards of the Canadian justice system, hearings in federal court tend toward the staid and the procedural. Most of the action happens before court, in long filings and back-and-forth affidavits.

The government is expected to begin laying out its case Tuesday. Though it touches on issues of deep emotion and fundamental justice, the government’s case will likely turn in court on narrow points of law. Already by late Friday, the arguments, couched in references and Latin, barely sounded like arguments at all.

The Safe Third Country Agreement was challenged once before, in 2007, and was initially thrown out by the Federal Court. That decision, however, was overturned by the Court of Appeal, in part because the applicants weren’t representing any single person who they could say had been harmed by the agreement.