PROGRESS ON REFUGEES
After 3-year-old Alan Kurdi’s body washed up on a Turkish beach earlier this month, Canadians came to realize how little this country was doing to admit Syrian refugees. Not only were the numbers to be let in relatively low, but various bureaucratic barriers stood in the way of reaching those targets.
A highly vocal public has shown leadership on this issue. Now, the government is following.
Chief among the welcome new measures announced Saturday by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander is that refugees hoping for resettlement in Canada will no longer be required to prove that they have been classified as convention refugees by a United Nations agency. Such papers have been almost impossible for anyone to obtain. As well, Alexander announced that the government will send more diplomats abroad to screen refugees and double the number of people working to process sponsorship applications in Canada. As a result, the government plans to meet its current target of bringing 10,000 Syrian refugees by September 2016, much more quickly than originally forecast.
In making the announcement, Alexander said that “security screening will remain the top priority.” It’s common sense for Canada to know whom it is letting in; Canadians expect no less. However, in the past couple of weeks, the Conservatives have been playing up the security issue, in face of attacks by the Liberals and NDP, who have been doing their best to shame the government over what they have suggested is its lack of compassion.
In stressing security, the Conservatives have been fanning fears, never more so than when the prime minister made the claim, during the Sept. 17 Globe and Mail debate, that his opponents “would have had, in the last two weeks, us throwing open our borders and literally hundreds of thousands of people coming without any kind of security check or documentation.” Hundreds of thousands? Neither the Liberals nor the NDP have made any such suggestion.
The government’s plan to speed up the processing of Syrian refugee applications is a case of better late than never. But late it is.