Oh, so now we’ve moved the goal posts and are suddenly talking about military action against ISIS instead of administrative paperwork regarding refugee applicants. I see.
So, yes. Military action against ISIS is necessary and warranted, and you would be foolish to think otherwise. ISIS is the root of the issue and we need to continue to attack the root.
No goalposts moving here. I feel you may have misunderstood the point I was trying to make.
What I was saying is that the outrage against Harper over the Syrian boy who died is misplaced. Harper can be criticized from many angles but this is not one of them. As tragic as the situation is, the fault ultimately lies with whomever filled out that paperwork (and not the bureaucrats who received it). If the aunt had been told that her nephew’s life depended on her filling out those forms correctly, she might have done so in the first place and we’d still be talking about Duffy. FWIW, the aunt doesn’t even blame the government. And allow me to repeat that the paperwork was handled correctly. The government won’t and shouldn’t accept incomplete forms, especially for refugees from troubled parts of the world.
The airstrike that may or may not have killed 27 civilians is a bigger story in my opinion. These are deaths caused directly by a conscious decision Harper made. But the Syrian boy makes a better headline.
Don’t be obtuse. He sent our military into a very complicated foreign civil war. I doubt it’s the first or the last civilian deaths that decision will bring. You probably think it’s worth it but don’t deny the costs.
Of course he isn’t. But civilian casualties are the completely foreseeable (inevitable, even) outcome of the decision Harper made to send the CF-18’s into that situation. If you want to say that participating in those airstrikes is a good decision, you have to think that civilian casualties are a price worth paying for whatever military benefit the airstrikes bring.
**This is Racist bullshit. WTF, these people are fleeing ISIS for shits sake they will be the most ardent supporters of getting rid of that terror group. In 1975 Joe Clark brought in 69,000 random refugees from Vietnam. You think they are all communists?Those able bodied “gooks” who settled in this country, raised children to be productive citizens, doctors lawyers, the type of people who GROW the Economy. This is a crisis of epic porportions. Canada hasn’t even lived up to it’s lowest promise of bringing in 10,000 LAST YEAR. **
Adiran Arsennault has a fantastic report. Watch it and stop with the racism.
Then why the fuck didn’t the government spend its own allotment of money on Refugees? And why did the Harper government deem it necessary to discriminate on the basis of religion? And why are there so few Syrians?
In the past several years, Canada has done an abysmal job with taking on refugees. Please do not pull the stunt of confusing immigrants with refugees. We are discussing the Syrian refugee crisis now. Please do us the favour of remaining intellectually honest.
Both Joe Clark and PET handled the Vietnamese refugee crisis without politicizing it. They got government people on the ground, cut red tape and worked with NGO’s to bring in 60,000 people in a relatively short space of time. And yes, there were those who moaned and cried about how it would ruin our economy. And how we were bringing in filthy communists.
Right now, the Harper Government is doing a terrible, TERRIBLE job. They are promising a lot. But what have the results been? Hard to tell, because (as usual), they are not releasing information about how many Syrian refugees have actually been helped. (They told the CBC to file a freedom of information request to get that info)
And who do the Harper Government blame? Their own bureaucrats. The ones who are following the orders of the Harper Government. Both Joe Clark and PET were able to cut through red tape when needed. What is wrong with Harper?
I’ll tell you one theory for what is wrong with Harper, and why VERY LITTLE is being done for these refugees;
They are mostly Muslim. And Harper’s Base does not like Mulsims. Harper has to tread a very fine line here - if he does too much, he will be offending his base. And he simply cant’ afford to do that. So he promises much, and delivers little. And yes, because of that, more people will die.
Well, now you can be (fake) arrested if you wear a t-shirt to a Harper rally that he does not like:
Sean Devlin was wearing a home-made T-shirt that said “Aylan Should Be Here” – a reference to Alan Kurdi.
Wait, what? “arrested” by private security? I’m sure they could have thrown him out, but arrested him? For “obstruction of justice”? Were they high?
But wait, it gets worse:
The RCMP had no business whatsoever trying to intimidate him like this. Their job at Harper events is to protect the PM. Period. Not intimidate any protestor who slips in with a t-shirt that might make Harper uncomfortable.
This campaign is really showing Harper’s true colours; Permit no dissent, crack down on protesters using private security, tell your candidates to go into hiding, attack the media…
Actually the final total of Indochinese refugees admitted was over 200,000, most during the initial couple of years of the crisis. We can do it if the political will is there.
I agree with this post entirely, and I will say it’s not only his base that he doesn’t want to offend. Harper has a problem with Muslims. This is an article from last December
Bear in mind the Harper government already promised to bring in more Syrian refugees. Politically speaking what you’re saying is therefore the complete reverse of what he should have done if he was appealing to a racist base. If it was his intent to play to a “Mulsim” hating base, the promise would not have been made in the first place, since that political battle would have been instantly lost the moment the promise was made. Whether Canada took in 10,000, 1,000 or 3 Syrian refugees after that point wouldn’t make any difference to the “base.” Once he made the promise, the memory of every genuine Islamophobe in Canada would have been that that absolutely did happen. That’s how bigots’ memories work.
For that matter, if Harper is engineering who-gets-into-Canada policy according to racism, I’m honestly quite curious as to why it is most immigrants to Canada, of all classifications, are visible minorities.
What I think is that
The crisis has obviously caught the developed world totally flatfooted, and
Harper’s administration is incompetent.
This is the simplest and most logical explanation. Harper’s government has gone to great lengths to curry favour with immigrants and immigrant communities, and with no small amount of success. The entire basis of Harper’s electoral success has been expanding, not contracting, his available votes.
Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence. The Harper government’s immigration strategy has been poorly executed in almost every respect; it’s not just refugee settlement. It takes a lot to fail to meet your own immigration targets when there’s more than ample supply.
Incidentally, I’ll believe the promises of Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau when I see them fulfilled. What the Canadian government did for the “boat people” was remarkable but I don’t think either of those men are terribly remarkable, and I certainly don’t think either has the moral courage of Pierre Trudeau or Joe Clark.