Allyson McConnell, the Australian mother convicted of drowning her two young sons in a bathtub in Canada, may be blocked from returning home.
McConnell, 34, has served 10 months of her 15-month jail term in an Alberta hospital and was due to be released on Thursday (Friday AEDT) and deported to Australia, but a detention review by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada will be held on Friday to examine McConnell's case.
The review follows protests by McConnell's former husband, Curtis McConnell, and Alberta authorities who lodged appeals against what they deemed was the Australian's lenient sentence and conviction for manslaughter, rather than murder.
They want the appeals to be heard before she leaves Canada.
"We really want this to be resolved here," Josh Stewart, press secretary for the provincial Ministry of Justice and Solicitor General, told the Edmonton Journal.
"Especially considering the circumstances, two small children, we do want justice to be done."
Canada's Federal Minister of Immigration Jason Kenney has the power to grant a stay of deportation for the remaining five months of McConnell's sentence.
McConnell, who suffered depression, drowned 10-month-old Jayden and two-and-a-half-year-old Connor in the bathtub of their family home in Millet, Alberta, in 2010.
The judge who convicted McConnell of the lesser charge of manslaughter found she did not have the requisite intent for murder.
McConnell moved to Canada in 2005 from her home on the NSW Central Coast, met Curtis McConnell and they married.
However, the marriage soured and the McConnells were engaged in a bitter divorce before the deaths, with McConnell desperate to take her boys back to her home town of Gosford.
