SYR Refugees to Canada (split fm SYR refugees thread)

[Brad Sallows]

>... Trudeau said his party had already set a target of accepting 25,000 refugees from Syria and the region, but are “committed to doing more.”

Why only that region?  What quotas do the NDP and LPC suggest for other parts of Africa, southeast Asia, and eastern Europe?

Headlines go back years announcing the deaths of X dozen or X hundred people - at sea, suffocated in containers, overcrowded vehicles in MVAs, attacked by combatants while fleeing or assembled in camps, etc.

This has followed the usual pattern: general indifference to everything in print; then a Shocking Image; then demands that someone (government of the day) do something Right Now.  Extra emphasis if it might be used for political leverage.  None of the people bleating showed much interest until a picture of a corpse face down in the mud on a beach showed up on the front page and in their social media feeds.

I understand the motivations: people care, a little bit, about the dead kid; mostly, they care about exploiting the circumstances of his death for political advantage.

Those people remind me of a verse from "Go Away" by Living Colour:

I see the starving Africans on TV
I feel it has nothing to do with me
I sent my twenty dollars to Liveaid
I've aided my guilty conscience to go away​

This is chiefly about guilty consciences and winning elections.  Most of the people who beak off about R2P have no intention whatsoever of following through.

 

[Kirkhill]

>... Trudeau said his party had already set a target of accepting 25,000 refugees from Syria and the region, but are “committed to doing more.”

Why only that region?  What quotas do the NDP and LPC suggest for other parts of Africa, southeast Asia, and eastern Europe?

Headlines go back years announcing the deaths of X dozen or X hundred people - at sea, suffocated in containers, overcrowded vehicles in MVAs, attacked by combatants while fleeing or assembled in camps, etc.

This has followed the usual pattern: general indifference to everything in print; then a Shocking Image; then demands that someone (government of the day) do something Right Now.  Extra emphasis if it might be used for political leverage.  None of the people bleating showed much interest until a picture of a corpse face down in the mud on a beach showed up on the front page and in their social media feeds.

I understand the motivations: people care, a little bit, about the dead kid; mostly, they care about exploiting the circumstances of his death for political advantage.

Those people remind me of a verse from "Go Away" by Living Colour:

I see the starving Africans on TV
I feel it has nothing to do with me
I sent my twenty dollars to Liveaid
I've aided my guilty conscience to go away​

This is chiefly about guilty consciences and winning elections.  Most of the people who beak off about R2P have no intention whatsoever of following through.

Brad, in general I can agree with you.

I assume you are not rationalizing inaction.  As I`ve said before, we can`t be everywhere all the time and solve all the problems.

In my view the situation calls for a bit of Ralph Klein`s wisdon:  it is time for the politicians to see which way the crowd is heading and run to the head of the parade.

Other versions: strike while the iron is hot, make hay while the sun shines - or Emmanuel Rahm`s never let a crisis go to waste.

In 2001 a catalyzing event permitted action.  10 years later the adrenaline was all gone and people just wanted it all to go away.  Is five years enough time for people to recharge their batteries and feel the adrenaline rush again?

 

[ModlrMike]

The voice of reason?

Analysis - On refugee crisis, PM must heed more than public opinion
Canadians may feel a moral imperative to act in the face of tragedy — but good public policy demands scrutiny

By Neil Macdonald, CBC News Posted: Sep 09, 2015 5:00 AM ET Last Updated: Sep 09, 2015 5:00 AM ET

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Brad, in general I can agree with you.

I assume you are not rationalizing inaction.  As I`ve said before, we can`t be everywhere all the time and solve all the problems.

In my view the situation calls for a bit of Ralph Klein`s wisdon:  it is time for the politicians to see which way the crowd is heading and run to the head of the parade.

Other versions: strike while the iron is hot, make hay while the sun shines - or Emmanuel Rahm`s never let a crisis go to waste.

In 2001 a catalyzing event permitted action.  10 years later the adrenaline was all gone and people just wanted it all to go away.  Is five years enough time for people to recharge their batteries and feel the adrenaline rush again?

Maybe. No matter what any politician does about it, the majority of the vocal minority, that are flagellating themselves over this, aren't going to change their vote anyway. It would garner no gain, so why bother. All the leaders have given their platform, thoughts and swipes at the other two. I suspect it won't dominate the huskings much past Monday or Tuesday. Unless, the MSM has a slow news day, or Harper gains in the polls. Then the stops will come out.

At least Harper wants security checks on every one of them we bring in.

 

[George Wallace]

At least Harper wants security checks on every one of them we bring in.

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

On refugee crisis, PM must heed more than public opinion
Canadians may feel a moral imperative to act in the face of tragedy — but good public policy demands scrutiny
By Neil Macdonald, CBC News
Posted: Sep 09, 2015 5:00 AM ET
Last Updated: Sep 09, 2015 5:00 AM ET

Public opinion is a fearsome force, particularly when it moves decisively and suddenly.

It tends to trample objections, as independent-minded Americans discovered following the events of Sept. 11.

And at the moment, on the strength of one remarkably powerful image from Turkey, Canadian public opinion decisively and suddenly wants the prime minister to order his officials, right now, to start accepting Syrian refugees by the thousands, or, even better, by the tens of thousands.

The Liberal and NDP leaders, recognizing a potential election game-changer when they see it, have fully embraced the idea. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has not.

Advocates of refugee admission put that down to his hawkishness, or a lack of pity. And Harper is partly to blame for that, given the awkward Conservative arguments that airstrikes by Canadian fighter jets over Syria and Iraq will in the long run help ordinary Syrians more than humanitarian aid.

But Harper is also the prime minister. And, as Ariel Sharon said after becoming Israel's leader, where you stand depends on where you sit.

Unlike Justin Trudeau and Tom Mulcair, Harper is regularly briefed by expert, senior government officials — public servants obligated by national self-interest, not polls, or the emotion that naturally arises from a picture of a small corpse face down on a beach.

They are no doubt telling him the obvious: that good public policy is not written in response to a single picture.

How much screening — and how quickly?

They would be pointing out that sensible refugee policy must consider the masses violently displaced from a number of countries other than Syria: Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Eritrea, Iran and Somalia, to name just the seven other nationalities most commonly given formal asylum in Europe.

And they would also be telling their prime minister something that politicians and journalists have trouble saying in a liberal democracy whose sympathetic citizens are demanding action: the Syrian refugees are emanating from the world's current epicentre of ethno-religious violence, and they require screening.

Proper screening takes time.

Yes, most are simply wretched victims of evil men. But many are also tribally or religiously tied to the vicious regime in Damascus, or the country's equally nasty array of rebel groups.

Even worse, some may carry a hatred for the foreign powers carrying out the airstrikes that kill both fighters and civilians. Like Canada.

And there will always be a fraction of Middle Eastern migrants unwilling to adapt to pluralist Western values. European governments have coped with that.

As a Canadian official who has for decades inhabited the secret world told me this week: "I'd advise the prime minister to go as slowly as possible."

Answering the bells

All that said, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service doesn't make policy. It will carry out as many security checks as instructed.

The question is, how quickly and thoroughly does the prime minister want those checks done?

There is the simplest sort of check: does the applicant have a criminal record, or ring a bell in any of the country's security databases? That sort of check can be done quickly.

But what if a bell rings? Then allied services have to be consulted, and the reason for the bell-ringing investigated.

Is the individual the problem, or does he or she merely share the same name as someone with a darker past? If it is a matter of association, how serious was that association? Did they just sit beside one another on a train, or in a mosque, or were they together?

Government ministers, of course, prefer complete assurance, which of course never exists. You don't really know you have a problem until you have a problem.

A matter of political will

Ask the agents suddenly tasked with investigating the Air India bombing in 1985; Canada's security agencies, faced with the worst militant attack in Canadian history, knew precious little about Sikh radicals in British Columbia. They barely had any translators who spoke the language.

Ordering expedited screening and acceptance of migrants from a place like Syria is therefore a matter of political will.

In the United States, clearly, no such will exists. Clearances there take an average of two years, and the Americans have staggering resources, compared with Canada.

Having gone through Sept. 11 and two subsequent wars, Americans are utterly uninterested in admitting huddled masses of Middle Eastern Arabs. (And probably not too keen on Canada doing so, given the shared border.)

The paradox, of course, is that the United States, which invaded Iraq based on a lie, is directly responsible for what is happening now in the region. And so, to an extent, is Canada nowadays, given Harper's taste for militarism.

Some act of remediation toward innocents would seem morally imperative.

But that doesn't alter reality.

A lot is being made now of Canada's admirable decision in 1979 to admit so many Vietnamese boat people. Vietnam, though, was not Syria.

And the decision Harper — or whoever emerges as prime minister after Oct. 19 — must make about admitting Syrian refugees isn't just about compassion, or even morality.

Photos, links and more on LINK.

 

[Remius]

http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/rick-hillier-on-help-for-refugees-i-think-we-need-to-do-it-in-a-big-way-1.2556849

The former CDS thinks Canada should do more.  I wonder if he was asked to comment or if he did so on his own initiative.

*Modified for atrocious spelling.

 

[Kirkhill]

Military assets will be deployed to what location Mr. Hillier?  Latakia, in Syria?  Kobane, on the Syrian-Turkish border?  Iskenderun in Turkey?  Mosul in Iraq? 

ISIS is operating in Mosul and Kobane.  The Turks don't want more refugees on their turf even momentarily.  The Russians have blocked out Latakia and Tartus in Syria.  Some of the governments involved see not "refugees" but "criminals in flight" and would cheerfully invoke the ancient border law of Hot Trod.  The idea of another Ayatollah Khomeini hanging out in Paris on the Left Bank and organizing their local insurrection is not considered appealing. And just in case - the Islamic State sees itself as a State.

To be honest, I don't have a problem with going into any of the places I have mentioned and recreating Kandahar 2007-2011.  In fact I think it is the right course of action.

But it would require a Canadian Brigade and not a Battlegroup.  And it would require a permanent presence (no exit strategies are possible in an area that saw urban warfare 5500 years ago. And it would require a willingness to authorizing Strategic Corporals to spill blood according to their assessment of local conditions - and tolerate their occasional screw ups.  But I am sure Mr. Hillier knows that better than me.

As to accepting refugees at a faster rate.  I might actually be okay with that.  The value of the existing rules and procedures can be debated - but now is not the time to be debating them.  We should operate under the existing rules.  What is the availability of qualified personnel trained in the existing procedures?  How many of them are available to turn the wheel faster, while still maintaining existing Quality Control standards, so that more refugees of the quality currently accepted can be accepted in a shorter period of time?

Is it appropriate to divert resources from other tasks so that, for example, these young girls could NOT be accepted as refugees in Canada?

One of two sisters sentenced to be gang-raped in India has spoken of her fear that the village elders who ordered the vile punishment will send someone to carry it out.

Because frankly I would rather have those two girls, and their brother, and his girlfriend/wife and their parents as neighbours than any of these gentlemen.

But hey, that's just me.  And my name isn't Hillier.

Edited to incorporate the correct image.

PS - and if you wish to debate how long race has played a role in the affairs of man:  Sumer, now southern Iraq, was the land of the "ung sang gig-ga".  Translated that means the black headed people: their own name for themselves and not a pejorative.  They invaded the turf circa 3600 BC - coincident with the urban warfare mentioned above.  The locals that were there before them are currently known as the Ubaid culture.

 

[The Bread Guy]

This got done pretty quickly, even with an election campaign under way ....

The Government of Canada announced today the creation of the Syria Emergency Relief Fund.

The Government will match every eligible dollar donated by individual Canadians to registered Canadian charities in response to the impact of the conflict in Syria, up to $100 million, effective immediately and until December 31, 2015.

The Fund will help meet the basic needs of conflict-affected people in the region, as well as in official development assistance-eligible transit countries for refugees. The Government’s contribution to this fund will provide assistance through international and Canadian humanitarian organizations and will meet humanitarian needs such as shelter, food, health and water, as well as protection and emergency education.

To be counted for the purposes of the Syria Emergency Relief Fund, donations from individual Canadians may not exceed $100,000 per individual and must be:

• Monetary in nature;
• Made to a registered Canadian charity that is receiving donations in response to the Syria crisis;
• Specifically earmarked for response to the Syria crisis;
• Made between September 12 and December 31, 2015;
• Used by the registered charity receiving the donation in support of the humanitarian response to the impact of the Syria crisis; and
• Declared by the registered charity receiving the donation to DFATD.

Since January 2012, Canada has committed $503.5 million in international humanitarian assistance funding in response to the Syria crisis.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Well big Rick has an answer:

Rick Hillier says military can help bring in 50,000 refugees by Christmas

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-rick-hillier-refugees-military-christmas-1.3225732

The Canadian Forces could play a key role in helping to bring at least 50,000 Syrian refugees — far more than the government is planning — to Canada by Christmas, retired general Rick Hillier says.

"We've got these incredible leaders in the Canadian Forces, across the RCMP and many other places in our nation who are ready to step up," he said in an interview with Rosemary Barton on CBC News Network's Power & Politics.

Hillier, the former chief of the defence staff, called for the government to bring in at least 50,000 Syrian refugees over the next three months, a figure he called realistic. <more at link>

 

[The Bread Guy]

Well big Rick has an answer:

Rick Hillier says military can help bring in 50,000 refugees by Christmas

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-rick-hillier-refugees-military-christmas-1.3225732

The Canadian Forces could play a key role in helping to bring at least 50,000 Syrian refugees — far more than the government is planning — to Canada by Christmas, retired general Rick Hillier says ....

We know the CAF can, the debate is whether they should.

I guess we'll see October 20th ....

 

[George Wallace]

I really hope that in all this "Bleeding Heart, knee jerk," political grandstanding on the part of some, they have a plan to not allow this to happen here:

 

[Halifax Tar]

I really hope that in all this "Bleeding Heart, knee jerk," political grandstanding on the part of some, they have a plan to not allow this to happen here:

Link to the story behind the photo ?

 

[George Wallace]

Link to the story behind the photo ?

The photo is of Muslims clashing with German Polizei (back a few years ago according to another site member who says they researched it, but gave no links).  It is not relevant that the photo was not taken two minutes ago or not.  What is relevant, is that there already exists a problem with Muslims migrants in many Western nations, and it is only expanding at a rate far larger than it has been in the last decade.  This migration has been in the news for quite some time.  Now that it now has numbers in the millions, it is suddenly news worthy for ALL the WORLD'S MSM.  The current solution of putting them all on Social Assistance in ethnic ghettos only creates a breeding ground for crime and violence. 

 

[Kirkhill]

Riots Canadians Have Known -  Link

1971 - Vancouver - 1000 Potheads in Gastown
2008 - Montreal - Canadiens Fans because they won
2002 - Montreal - Concordia over Netanyahu appearance
1919 - Winnipeg - General Strike
1994 - Vancouver - Canucks Fans because they lost
1992 - Montreal - Guns n Roses Fans riot because
2001 - Quebec - 3rd Summit of the Americas
1969 - Montreal - Sir George Williams (Concordia) riot over racism
1955 - Montreal - Rocket Richard riot
1993 - Montreal - Canadiens Fans because they won

Some others

2010 - Toronto - G20 protests
1933 - Toronto - Christie Pits riots
1935 - Regina - Labour riots
1992 - Toronto - Yonge Street riots over racism
1913 - Vancouver Island - Coal Miners riots.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Interesting article from the Toronto Star of all places, where the author, Martin Regg Cohn, believes that this ongoing refugee crisis may be just the beginning of something that will become normal. Re-produced under the usual caveats of the Copyright Act.

Some hard truths no one wants to hear on refugees: Cohn

We need to open our hearts to the latest wave of Syrian refugees, but we also need to open our minds to what lies ahead.

No matter where Canadians stand on the latest refugee crisis, they can probably agree on a few simple truths.

First, no one wants to just stand on the sidelines. Canadians want to do something — anything — to help refugees escaping Syria’s civil war if only someone will lead the way.

Second, the Conservative government’s actions — and inaction — don’t stand up. At a time of global crisis and domestic clamour, a heartless prime minister and a hapless immigration minister have lost credibility, utterly.

Canadians everywhere — everyone, it seems, except the federal government — are moving into that political vacuum. A lack of leadership and an absence of empathy have left the field wide open for others to respond decisively at every level of government, and especially at ground level.

Premier Kathleen Wynne unveiled an ambitious $10.5 million program Saturday funded entirely by the provincial government to speed resettlement of 10,000 refugees. Across the partisan divide — from Saskatchewan’s Premier Brad Wall (a right winger) to B.C.’s Christy Clark and Quebec’s Philippe Couillard (both Liberals) — other leaders have taken action. Mayor John Tory also moved quickly to spearhead community support in Toronto.

By getting bogged down in excuses, the federal government failed to heed a fundamental truth: Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.
Here’s another truth: While this is no ordinary crisis, it may be the new normal.
Waves of refugees fleeing peril or migrants escaping poverty will not subside anytime soon. Mass movements of displaced people have been with us since the dawn of history and are in our future. The Syrian civil war started five years ago and produced five million refugees before the world woke up to a photo of a child’s corpse on a beach.

It is admirable that Canadians are responding with open arms to a seemingly short-term refugee crisis. But it would be naive not to ask what happens when the short term becomes long term.

During a decade as a foreign correspondent I saw enough refugees in camps across Asia and the Middle East to understand what experts have warned about for decades: Mass migrations are inevitable, whether caused by war, water shortages, poverty or climate change.

An urgent humanitarian response is only human, but it is not enough. We must also reduce the causes of mass migrations (conflict and chaos), and avoid making those migrations even more dangerous (by tempting people to start a stampede) because people will die in the crush, drown on the high seas, suffocate in sealed trucks.

It is too easy to utter bromides about open borders — libertarians and humanitarians are quick to say let everyone in — when we know the knock-on effects could make it worse. How? By encouraging a mad dash that will stoke people smuggling; by creating massive bottlenecks that will delay speedy resettlement; by displacing legitimate refugees who will inevitably be crowded out by the rush of those with more resources to make the leap across an ocean or a continent.

What about the genuine victims of war who languish for years in refugee camps, lacking the connections or credentials to be transported to the front of the line? When we rush to embrace boat people, do we not bear at least some responsibility for rewarding them for taking reckless risks? Yes, many are desperate, but it would be disingenuous to claim that they are all fleeing war for when so many are undeniably economic migrants in a hurry.

In the rush to sponsor Syrians to Canada, relatively little is said about supporting the infrastructure of refugee processing handled by the UNHCR in countries bordering Syria. While it may generate fewer headlines at home, not enough thought is being given to the more affordable, sustainable, realistic (if less idealistic) alternative of funding camps closer to war zones, so that refugees can be repatriated more rapidly if those conflicts subside.

We need to open our hearts to the latest wave of Syrian refugees, but we also need to open our minds to what lies ahead. The crisis is unlikely to be temporary. It cannot be resolved with a few thousand more sponsorships and a few million more dollars, as important as those contributions are.

The federal Tories have missed the boat on the latest wave of boat people, but many well-intentioned do-gooder’s have been selling us a bill of goods about the refugee crisis. We need to start thinking about what comes next.

It is good to be principled, but we must also be practical. Mass migrations are at the intersection of war, geopolitics, economics, logistics and human smuggling. They defy easy answers. The reality is that refugee fatigue will set in anew, because the flood never ends — it merely fades from the front pages. What then?
Martin Regg Cohn’s Ontario politics column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn

Article Link

 

[dimsum]

Interesting article from the Toronto Star of all places, where the author, Martin Regg Cohn, believes that this ongoing refugee crisis may be just the beginning of something that will become normal. Re-produced under the usual caveats of the Copyright Act.

Article Link

Wow - I had to double-check the link that it was indeed the Toronto Star that printed it.  Good article and on point. 

 

[ModlrMike]

But what's in a name? I notice that the press in Europe is almost universal in calling them migrants, where the press here is almost universal in calling them refugees.

Does it matter? Does one require more urgent intervention than the other?

 

[George Wallace]

But what's in a name? I notice that the press in Europe is almost universal in calling them migrants, where the press here is almost universal in calling them refugees.

Does it matter? Does one require more urgent intervention than the other?

I would suggest that the migrants are moving for economic reasons, as opposed to the refugees fleeing from persecution from an ethnic or religious majority.  When I see a Pakistan being interviewed by the media (probably because he could speak English and no translation was needed), I would say he was a migrant.  The migrants from Libya and other North African nations, coming from Eritrea, Ethiopia and other African nations; I would call migrants.  Christians, Kurds and other non-Islamic religions fleeing persecution in Syria, Iraq, etc.; I would call refugees.

Next question:  Security Checks.  Can anyone explain to me how any Security Checks can be done on any of these people, refugee or migrant, if they are, in the majority of cases, from Failed states?  How does anyone in our political scene expect such a check to be done in less than three months?  Only solution is to blindly bring in all and sundry and cross our fingers, we did not allow too many criminal or other disruptive persons in.

 

[Rifleman62]

This got done pretty quickly, even with an election campaign under way ....
Quote

    The Government of Canada announced today the creation of the Syria Emergency Relief Fund.

    The Government will match every eligible dollar donated by individual Canadians to registered Canadian charities in response to the impact of the conflict in Syria, up to $100 million, effective immediately and until December 31, 2015.

Now we will see if Canadians put their money where their mouth is according to certain political heads and the media party. All the media who used this migration as a sob story should be first up to the donations table.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Riots Canadians Have Known -  Link

1971 - Vancouver - 1000 Potheads in Gastown
2008 - Montreal - Canadiens Fans because they won
2002 - Montreal - Concordia over Netanyahu appearance
1919 - Winnipeg - General Strike
1994 - Vancouver - Canucks Fans because they lost
1992 - Montreal - Guns n Roses Fans riot because
2001 - Quebec - 3rd Summit of the Americas
1969 - Montreal - Sir George Williams (Concordia) riot over racism
1955 - Montreal - Rocket Richard riot
1993 - Montreal - Canadiens Fans because they won

Some others

2010 - Toronto - G20 protests
1933 - Toronto - Christie Pits riots
1935 - Regina - Labour riots
1992 - Toronto - Yonge Street riots over racism
1913 - Vancouver Island - Coal Miners riots.

Except most of these (modern ones anyway) were not trying to change the way we live, change our constitution or marginalize our religions. They were simply drunken hooligans.