A human rights lawyer says documents that the Canadian government argues contain confidential matters of national security were shoved into his door frame, with no signature or password needed.

Benjamin Perryman, who teaches constitutional law at the University of New Brunswick, represents a Roma Hungarian couple who claim border officials discriminated against them on the basis of ethnicity.

The government argues that no discrimination was involved when Canadian authorities cancelled the “electronic travel authorization” of the couple, Attila and Andrea Kiss, at the Budapest airport in 2019.

In April, the Federal Court of Appeals ordered the immigration minister to send sensitive documents containing screening criteria as an encrypted online file to parties in the case using the Microsoft SharePoint platform.

Instead, Perryman says the government FedExed a CD-ROM that was “stuffed” into the door frame of his house in Halifax and needed no encryption, password protection or signature upon receipt of the package. The Canadian Press has seen photos of the envelope lodged in the door.

The process is inconsistent with the government’s claim that releasing screening indicators — used to weed out potential illegal immigrants before arrival in Canada, where they could hypothetically claim asylum — would harm the country’s safety and security, he said.

“Canada makes the claim that if material got into wrong hands that there would be substantial injury,” Perryman said. “And I arrived at home to find it stuffed into my door on the outside.

“Theft of packages is common in Canada, including in my neighbourhood. This is not a remote possibility,” he said.

The Immigration Department says the government “takes privacy and security issues very seriously.”

“Processes in relation to the transmission of court documents and for the protection of privacy and sensitive information are in place and will be reiterated to all employees in order to prevent any further reoccurrence,” Immigration spokesman Jeffrey MacDonald said in an email.

The package included a cover letter stating the government had permission from court staff to send the package as a CD-ROM, Perryman added, but stressed that it was unencrypted.