Yesterday, Federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen and Ontario Minister of Children, Community and Social Services Lisa MacLeod sparred with each other over refugees. It's getting pretty ugly. Martin Patriquin looks at the numbers:
In 2017, the Canadian Border Security Agency processed 11,400 asylum claimants at the country’s land ports of entry, a more than 170-per-cent increase over 2011, according to statistics from the federal government. The largest percentage of claimants hail from Haiti, with Nigerians a distant second. Surprisingly, 2,550 American citizens also sought refugee status in this country in 2017—a 545-per-cent increase over 2016.
The movement of refugees is being driven by people fleeing war. And by an American president who doesn't understand the problem. Ignorance is also at the root of the Ontario government's response:
Lisa MacLeod, the Ontario government’s newly-ensconced Minister of Children, Community and Social Services, has spent much of her first two weeks in office triangulating her nativist anger against the “illegal border crossers” and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the supposed enabler of all this illegal activity. “Illegal border crossers are not following [the] rules, and the federal government is not enforcing them,” MacLeod bellowed recently.
Not to explain her job to her, but surely MacLeod is aware of Canada’s commitment to the U.N. Refugee Convention, in effect for 67 years, recognizing that anyone can make a refugee claim should they have a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” Further, the Minister must be aware that making such claims “can require refugees to breach immigration rules,” as the Convention states.
Then there is Doug Ford, who is as clueless as MacLeod. They claim that what has happened in Europe is an object lesson. But they haven't been paying attention:
You need look only at Europe to see the folly in this argument. 2015 was the year of the ‘migrant crisis’, in which Greece, Italy and Germany alone took in as many as 1.75 million migrants by land and sea, according to the UN High Commission for Refugees. This vast movement of humanity stoked nativist pangs in these countries along with Hungary, Spain, Poland and elsewhere. It was arguably one of the driving forces behind the Brexit vote ruling the day.
And yet three years later, the flow of migrants has largely returned to pre-2015 normality. The reason is simple enough: people have less a reason to flee their homes. Stripped of the politics, it’s a reminder how people don’t generally uproot their lives unless they are fleeing bombs or persecution.
Finally, there are our own numbers. The average Canadian family is producing 1.6 children. We're not even replacing ourselves. We need immigration to keep the country from stagnating. But Ford and MacLeod don't pay attention to such things.
Our small community has welcomed Syrian refugees. Hijabs are now a common sight on our streets. We've had to make some adjustments. But we've made them. And, yes, it takes money and good will to make them.
But Ignorance and Cold Hearts won't accomplish that.
Image: The Conversation
4 comments:
Lord of the Flies? Are we caught in a novel?
Golding understood the dark cruelty that human beings -- under a particular kind of leader -- could unleash, Mound. We seem to be producing a number of such leaders.
This Lisa MacLeod person typifies the Conservative Nitwit to me.
Devoid of basic knowledge due to not paying attention in school or anywhere else, it arrives in power without the first clue about existing norms, acts and regulations. Sloughing off its ignorance, the Nitwit assumes it can just order things about with no consequence.
Two weeks into her job, MacLeod is just discovering she does not understand what it is she doesn't know. And it must be a nasty surprise to find out that you're an ill-informed dork when you had such a high opinion of your undereducated self up till then.
It's the Conservative disease.
As for having Hussen apologize to her, what a hoot! Perhaps her embarrassment at being shown up as an ill-informed dolt stung her so much, all she could respond with was a personal attack and unwarranted demand for an apology. It is she who needs to apologize, not the other way around.
Again, her response is pretty much standard Conservative drivel and whinge. If you're not yet up to speed on your job, it's wise to keep your trap shut. And training takes more than two weeks of assumptions plucked from the vacuum between one's ears - it takes months of hard work.
Doug will be getting it on the chin as well. His carbon policy will smash on the rocks of an imposed federal tax. Several years ago when there were provincial lowbrow premiers railing against federal imposition of such, I did a fair amount of online research before Google became useless. There were expert opinions dating back to 2010 that generally agreed the Feds can constitutionally impose a carbon fee, provided they called it a "tax", even if it strictly is not. Tied up in the wording of federal and provincial powers. Don't suppose Doug and his crowd have spent five minutes researching anything. They think they're on a Trump roll. Unluckily for Ford, he's not the biggest cheese in the land.
Good luck Ontario. You're going to need it with amateurs on the job. Amateurs who like MacLeod consider themselves smart enough to operate with little to no knowledge, and feel no pressing need to acquire it.
BM
You understand the problem we're faving in Ontario, BM. The people we've just put in office don't know anything.
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