Jaskirat Singh Sidhu has been fighting to stay in Canada instead of being deported to his home country of India. (THE CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO/Ryan Remiorz)
CALGARY — A deportation hearing for the truck driver in the deadly Humboldt Broncos bus crash has been scheduled for next month.
Jaskirat Singh Sidhu caused the 2018 crash that killed 16 people and injured 13 others.
The rookie Calgary trucker, a newly married permanent resident from India, ran a stop sign at a rural intersection near Tisdale. He drove into the path of the bus carrying the SJHL team to a playoff game in Nipawin.
In 2019, Sidhu was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to 16 charges of dangerous driving causing death and 13 counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm in the wake of the crash.
Sidhu was granted day parole for six months in July of 2022. He got full parole after following conditions set out by the Parole Board of Canada and, according to his lawyer, is now working in Calgary.
His lawyer, Michael Greene, now says a deportation hearing is scheduled for May 24.
Greene says the hearing will likely only last a few minutes and at that point Sidhu can apply for permanent resident status on humanitarian grounds.
“It was an inevitability. I mean, the (immigration) minister could always decide not to go ahead with it, but it doesn’t seem to be happening at this point anyway,” Greene said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
“There’s nothing to contest. You’re convicted or you’re not. All they have to establish is he’s not a citizen and that he was convicted.”
Sidhu was granted full parole last year, but his application for a second immigration review was dismissed in Federal Court.
Greene had argued that Canada Border Services Agency officials didn’t consider Sidhu’s previously clean criminal record and remorse. He had asked for the agency to be ordered to conduct a second review, but that request was denied.
In his decision, Justice Paul Crampton wrote that Sidhu was seeking to have two decisions about his future in Canada “set aside and remitted for reconsideration by different decision-makers.”
One decision was by a CBSA officer recommending that Sidhu be considered for deportation, and the other was by a delegate for the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness who found the CBSA officer’s decision to be well-founded.
“I find that the processes followed by the Officer and the Delegate were fair, having regard to all of the circumstances,” the judge wrote. “I also find that the Decisions were not unreasonable.”
Some of the victims’ families have said Sidhu should be deported, while others have supported his bid to stay in Canada.
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