1. Introduction November 2014 marked the 60th anniversary of the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the unveiling of UNHCR’s global IBELONG campaign to end statelessness by 2024. Since 2014, several countries have made efforts to address statelessness through enacting domestic legislation and policy, including acceding to one or both of the statelessness Conventions,5 implementing statelessness determination procedures, and committing to awareness raising campaigns and programming to end statelessness. In light of this recent push, several country mapping exercises have taken place, mostly in Europe. This study is the first attempt to learn about the different stateless profiles in Canada.6 Canada has ratified the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, but not the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons making it challenging to identify and count the number of stateless persons in Canada in view of the absence of a specific mechanism to determine who is stateless. The Canadian legal framework as it pertains to stateless persons is lacking in several ways. There is no definition of a stateless person in Canadian law, nor mechanisms in place to identify stateless persons or policies and legislation that are specifically designed to facilitate naturalization of stateless persons. In addition, there are significant gaps with respect to our knowledge of the issue and the impact of being stateless in Canada on the enjoyment of basic human rights due to the lack of data and visibility of this population. Therefore, the objective of this report is twofold: first, to understand the different profiles of stateless persons in Canada, and the impacts their status has on the enjoyment of their human rights; and second, to explore remedies currently available to stateless persons and to identify gaps. The report is an important step towards understanding the usefulness of the legal avenues accessible to stateless persons looking for permanent status in Canada. The testimonies of stateless persons in Canada attest to the complications in accessing immigration procedures due to their length and cost and due to the socio-economic and health challenges faced by stateless persons throughout the years, some living in limbo with no resolution to their situation. This report used four main research methods to obtain information to understand the profiles of stateless people and the consequences of not having status in Canada: a qualitative analysis of immigration cases heard before Canadian courts where stateless people were affected; a review of the limited government statistics concerning statelessness that are available; a review of media reports on statelessness; and a series of semi-structured interviews with stateless persons. The first section of this report provides an overview of the definitions and scope of statelessness. The second section draws from government statistics, legal research and interviews to present 5 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. 6 UNHCR has produced two reports on statelessness in Canada: Brouwer, A. Statelessness in the Canadian Context: An Updated Discussion Paper (2012), which analysed Canadian citizenship and immigration legislation as it pertained to avoiding statelessness, determining statelessness, naturalisation and immigration processes, and the detention and removal of stateless persons; and Erauw, G. Compatibility of the 1954 convention Relating to the status of stateless persons With Canada’s legal framework and its International human rights obligations (2015), which investigated the compatibility of Canada's legal framework with the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons. 1