BORDER PLAN HALF-BAKED
The Liberal government wants us to think they have a plan to deal with the illegal border crisis. In reality, they won’t even call it a crisis and warehousing refugees in seedy motel rooms isn’t much of a plan.
Nevertheless, cabinet ministers met Tuesday before an emergency House of Commons immigration committee meeting to discuss the issue.
One of the key consequences of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s open borders policy is the strain put on social services in communities they migrate to – primarily Toronto and Montreal for now.
Toronto Mayor John Tory revealed weeks ago that hundreds of asylum seekers staying in college dorms will need to be booted out in August when students return. The city has wisely rejected housing them in community centres.
The feds just revealed they’ll instead pony up the costs for housing refugee claimants in hotel rooms once they leave the dorms.
This is a far more acceptable solution than placing them in community gyms. It’s also an appallingly poor and temporary solution.
And yet this is pretty much all the federal Liberals have proposed.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and others were on hand Tuesday to answer questions about what they would do to assist migrants who cross illegally into Canada and jump the asylum application queue, but did little to explain how they would stop the flow across the border.
When Bill Blair, the new minister of Border Security and Organized Crime, was asked which agencies reported to him, he could not answer. His post thus appears toothless.
Canada’s immigration system has until now been the envy of the world. This is largely because it is a controlled and fair system based on bringing in a mix of economic class immigrants alongside refugees in serious and genuine need.
Integrating refugees is a complex, costly and difficult undertaking. Trudeau should have thought about that before making his #Welcometocanada tweet.
If thousands continue to randomly cross the border, it undermines our entire immigration system and condemns those seeking our help to motel refugee camps.
Not the welcome they perhaps expected.
The Liberals need to understand the cost and implications of their open border and take responsibility for those they’ve allowed into this country.