Liberals to boost health coverage for refugees
25,000 Syrians enough, says poll of Canadians
THIS WILL HELP REFUGEES, IT WILL HELP HEALTH-CARE PROVIDERS.
OTTAWA
• The federal Liberals have announced they are boosting health coverage for refugees, just as a new poll suggests that more than 70 per cent of Canadians don’t want the government to take in more than 25,000 displaced Syrians.
The Liberals said Thursday they are ripping up a patchwork system of healthcare coverage for newly arrived refugees and those seeking refugee status in favour of blanket coverage for all, starting in April.
They’ll also extend coverage in 2017 to certain refugees before they even arrive in Canada, including picking up the tab for the medical exams they need to pass in order to move here.
“This will help refugees, it will help health-care providers, it will help Canadians,” Health Minister Jane Philpott said.
But a poll released Friday by the Angus Reid Institute suggests a majority of Canadians believe the country is approaching its limit for accepting Syrian refugees. More than 21,000 had arrived in Canada as of Tuesday, according to a federal government website. The Liberals are working to meet a target of 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the month.
Immigration Minister John McCallum also has promised the Liberals would exceed their original commitment and accept a total of 35,000 to 50,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2016. The poll suggests this is at odds with what the majority of Canadians want.
Most Canadians feel the timeline is too short, and fewer than one in three think the refugee screening process is adequate to ensure none of the refugees pose a threat to Canadians, Angus Reid said. In fact, more than four in 10 would prefer Canada stop short of the goal of 25,000, while another three in 10 say 25,000 is enough.
Support for exceeding the 25,000 benchmark is lowest in the Prairies and Quebec, where fewer than a quarter of respondents were in favour. It is highest in B.C., where roughly two in five respondents were in favour.
The Angus Reid Institute poll drew responses from more than 1,500 Canadians who are members of the Angus Reid Forum, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
The poll results come just days after a Calgary school was vandalized with the message “Syrians Go Home and Die.”
McCallum has acknowledged the potential for negative attitudes toward the arriving refugees.
“It’s a delicate balance,” he said in January. “We want to welcome all of these refugees with open hearts and with love the way Canadians have, but at the same time we are mindful that we don’t want to offend Canadians who have, themselves, been waiting for a long time for social housing and things of that nature.”
During the election campaign last year, the Liberals pledged to restore the federal health program. The former Conservative government had clawed back many of its provisions in a 2012 move that was part of a broader overhaul of the refugee system and also a bid to save $20 million a year.
That led to a series of successful court challenges. A scathing 2014 decision from the Federal Court ruled that the cuts amounted to “cruel and unusual” treatment and put people’s lives in danger.
While the court decisions forced the Conservatives to bring back some of the benefits, they didn’t restore them all, instead creating more than a dozen categories that frustrated health-care providers and claimants.
The Liberals took the first step late last year to restoring the program when they granted full coverage to Syrian refugees who were coming to Canada.
McCallum said the restoration will cost an additional $5.9 million a year and the extension of the program will cost $5.6 million starting in 2017. He said the money is covered by the existing $51-million-a-year budget for the program.
In the wake of the Conservative cuts, several provinces stepped forward to pick up the tabs on their own and one of them, Ontario, estimates it spent $2 million providing the extra care.