Chris Alexander has left the campaign trail over the refugee crisis. There is talk that one of the drowned children whose picture has been all over the Internet was froma family that had tried and failed to get into Canada.
I’m not downplaying the importance of things like Mike Duffy, child benefit schemes and deficit spending, but holy shit are we lucky in Canada.
As to the refugee crisis, my only position of debate on the matter is whether Canada should do a lot, or a whole lot. We have lots of room, let’s let more of these people in.
And yet many of the “usual conservative suspects” on the National Post comments page seem to be divided along the lines of :
Don’t let anyone in because they are all terrorists
It’s all Trudeau’s fault
This just means that you lefties want us to lose the war to ISIS
They all seem to be united in the notion that THEIR Canada should not let in any refugees at all. Ever. Especially those from “that part” of the world.
This is the Conservative Party base. This is who they have to appease to get votes. This is why I call them The Nasty Party.
ETA: I believe that Alexander has gone into hiding, as well as Kenny. They have both cancelled previously arranged interviews. Presumably so they can figure out the talking points, and how to blame Trudeau or the media for this screw-up.
I just listened to the CBC interview with Chris Alexander from last year. in a nutshell, Alexander refused to answer Carol Off’s questions about the exact number of refugees that were realistically helped into Canada (this is after avoiding the CBC for over 6 months).
This came to be because the government was criticized as clamping down on refugee entry, secret/quiet denial/refusal of service, and lack of transparency. Alexander replied that none of that was true and that this administration was doing a lot of help. Off then asks him to quantify the number of Government sponsored refugees have arrived in Canada. Everything breaks down after that request.
Please listen to the interview yourselves it really highlights the Tory media/parliament operating procedure of 1) Avoidance 2) Misdirection 3) Obfuscation 4) Reluctance address concerns 5) Contempt
There is room. Trudeau thinks at least 25,000 can come in. As Canadians we need to continue our core value of helping the least among us. i couldn’t sleep when I saw that baby’s lifeless body washed on the shore.
Of course by telling only half the story, the Conservatives want to let you know how wonderful they are. Immigration is different from taking in Refugees. And since Trudeau thinks Canada can take in 25,000 and Mulcair says 10,000 should come in immediately, the Harper government is woefully inadequate in their numbers. They don’t want Syrians in, they just want to fight Issis with a defunded military.
So tell me oh All Knowing Stevie lover why the Immigration Minister dropped his campaign? And why are there only a thousand refugees when there should be over 10,000 at this point?
Why don’t you tell me how many refugees per month we can logistically handle? Could we have processed and housed all 20,000 by now in your expert opinion?
Oh no, I’m relying on the expert Harper boys who said they could handle 20,000 and were on track to get that number in. So here’s the thing. There’s only 4 months left in the year 2015. Ya think maybe they’d quit stalling and get at least half their number in by now? How sad It takes an election issue to make it happen. These bastards have no compassion.
Our immigration and refugee processing is abysmal, with complexities and delays that need not be.
I don’t practice immigration or refugee law, but one of my friends does, and I get an earful of complaints from her. Complaints about delays and lost documents and more delays and impossible demands and still more delays. Complaints that find supported when I freely offer notarial services to people being processed by that system.
My guess is that the sister did make an application for each of her brothers, rather than for just one of them, and that her MP did write to the Minister as he alleges, but our system dropped the ball, resulting in three people dying when they should have been safely here. That is shameful.
And yet despite this, we still have one of the highest immigration rates per capita in the world.
If it’s shameful, then it’s an administrative issue and not a political issue. The administration that bungles paperwork is not related to a political party, but to the … well administration.
What is the rush? Don’t you think that if we want to slow, or preferably stop this refugee crisis, then maybe go to the source of it? And the source, in case you aren’t aware, is ISIS. They are the ones driving this crisis. Stop ISIS and you stop the refugee crisis.
In the meantime, do you want a bunch of unknowns, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 or more flooding our shores? Regardless of who is sitting in Ottawa, government workers only move so fast. Or didn’t you know that?
How do we get these people here? How do we verify exactly who they are? Now that is very important, at least in my eyes. What do we do with them when they arrive? Put them in those empty camp trailers in the oil fields?
And since a very large number of these refugees are able bodied men, that ran from their country rather then stay and fight ISIS, do we really want those kind of people?
If a few thousand of those men had stayed and fought, that just might have made a difference.
Syria’s civil war did not start with ISIS, and the removal of ISIS will not stop Syria’s civil war.
As to whether the problems are administrative or political, to some extent they are one and the same. The leadership provides, well, leadership, as well as funding, and clearly processing refugee claims isn’t as high a priority as it could be.
As much as we might like it to be that Harper personally held the kid’s head underwater while cackling that his kind would never soil our shores, it doesn’t even rise to the level of a bureaucratic screwup. The paperwork was incomplete and was sent back as such. The local MP got involved, made a high level contact and was probably told once these folks get their paperwork in order they’d be in the queue. No malice was involved. If your paperwork isn’t in order it will be rejected. That’s how it is supposed to work.
Now on the other hand, if we need some deaths to lay directly at the feet of Mr. Harper, how about this Canadian Forces bombing that might have killed 27 civilians but we’re not sure because no one wants to look too closely:
I know you’re being facetious but the fact remains that they can’t just fucking walk or even take a train to Canada. Flying in 20,000 random people, vetting them to some degree and then finding a place for them to stay once they get here is a bit of a job. Not to mention financing and providing for them once they’re in the country.