Uncomfortable questions at the border
This is soon to be the summer of our discontent, disagreement and discomfort, as Canadians watch increasing numbers of people claiming asylum try their luck at undesignated border crossings
Discontent over Justin Trudeau’s government’s handling of the file. Disagreement over how it should be handled, and discomfort over the realization that, despite the often-proffered narrative of Canada’s endless, unconditional welcome of newcomers, we’re wary, to say the least, about this phenomenon.
As they try to escape the fear and uncertainty of U.S. President Donald Trump’s ever-tightening restrictions on immigration, and spurred on by that now infamous prime ministerial tweet, they do so by circumventing Canada’s Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), which denies entry to those who have already claimed or obtained status in the United States, by crossing into Canada not at airports or other staffed border crossings but anywhere they can, along thousands of kilometres of unmonitored perimeter.
Who doesn’t remember the iconic photograph early last year, of a smiling Mountie lifting a little girl in a pink coat over the U.S.-Canada border near Hemmingford, Que? What came to national attention as something of a curiosity — and for many a representation of the “best of Canada” — has since given way to pointed questions about how officials plan to deal with the tens of thousands and counting who are seeking to make a home on this side of the 49th parallel.
When the issue again dominated headlines last fall, slightly more than half of Canadians (53 per cent) said the country has been “too generous” to the border crossers, more than eight times as many as those who said Canada hasn’t been “generous enough” (six per cent).
Politics drives those opinions: Past Conservative voters are overwhelmingly more likely to say this, although it should be noted that at least 40 per cent of 2015 Liberals and, yes, even past New Democrat voters agree.
As to where they wanted government focusing its attention, seven in 10 said they’d prioritize assigning more staff to monitoring and securing unguarded parts of the border. The rest (30 per cent) said they’d prioritize assisting those seeking asylum.
Little wonder, then, that at the time, the majority (57 per cent) disapproved of the Liberal government’s handling of the situation, including one-third of the party’s past voters.
Even less wonder, for reasons practical and political, a government that last year rejected calls to suspend the STCA is now calling on the U.S. to agree to amendments that would have it apply to the entire length of the border.
How did we get here? Didn’t Trudeau proclaim that “diversity is our strength?” Wasn’t the popularity of his stance on accepting 25,000 Syrian refugees part of what convinced centre and centreleft voters to spur the Liberals to a majority?
The thing is, feel-good rhetoric is easier to accept when a complex issue isn’t staring you right in the eyeballs. Before this, incidents of irregular asylum seekers suddenly reaching our borders were largely limited to a handful of boats that managed an arduous ocean journey, Indian nationals arriving off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador in the ’80s, migrants from Fujian arriving in the late ’90s, and Sri Lankans who made a similar trip about 10 years later.
Not until now have we had to answer uncomfortable questions about how welcoming we really are. The vast majority of people in this country (79 per cent) have said our immigration and refugee policy should give primacy to national economic and workforce needs over those in crisis abroad (21 per cent).
Given the more than 150,000 economic class immigrants who came from every corner of the world in 2016, diversity is indeed our strength. What Canadians perceive as a government weakness, however, is equating diversity with an open invitation followed by an ill-prepared response, to unchecked migration as Canada confronts its own mini- Greece moment.