The Star’s view: Canada fails the challenge,

Time and again, through good years and bad, Canadians have shown themselves to be generous towards people caught in desperate situations abroad.

We took in 37,000 Hungarians in little more than a year back in the mid-1950s. A decade later, it was 11,000 Czechs fleeing communism. In the 1970s thousands of Ugandan Asians were airlifted to Canada, and at the end of that decade Canadians opened their hearts and their homes to 60,000 “boat people” from Southeast Asia.

This can be done. In a matter of months — not years — tens of thousands of people seeking refuge from war and oppression can be offered new lives in this country. We’ve done it before — repeatedly.

Yet in the face of what Canada’s immigration minister calls “the biggest humanitarian crisis of our time,” this country has not stepped up in a way that honours its proud tradition of extending sanctuary to those in acute danger. With millions displaced in the Middle East, the federal government has talked big and acted small.

It took the heart-breaking image of three-yearold Alan Kurdi, the “boy on the beach,” to finally focus national attention on this crisis, which has been building steadily for years.

Clearly, we need to find out exactly what led Alan, his brother Ghalib and their mother Rehan to their deaths in the waters off Turkey. The government needs to spell out exactly what happened. If their family’s attempt to reach safety in Canada was in fact rejected, why? Was it simply, as some reports had it, that they lacked the right kind of documents to get an exit visa allowing them to leave Turkey?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper tried to make the case on Thursday that Canada has been “the most generous country in the world” per capita when it comes to accepting refugees. The numbers suggest otherwise.

Until the end of last year, when the Syrian crisis had already been raging for three years, Canada had committed to accepting just 1,300 refugees from that country — a pittance in the face of the four million people displaced there. In January it raised the number to 10,000 over three years. But the number of Syrian refugees who have actually managed to make it through the system so far and find safety in Canada, according to Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, is only 2,300.

Why the lack of urgency? Canada didn’t dither when the Hungarians, Czechs, Ugandans and Indochinese needed sanctuary. The governments of the time smoothed the way and thousands of ordinary Canadians did their part by privately sponsoring newcomers. It didn’t even cost the government much, since private sponsors pick up most of the cost of resettlement.

It could be done again, but we would need a government that set the right tone from the top and was determined to cut through the paperwork at home and if necessary abroad, where would-be refugees languish in camps.

Instead, the Harper government has systematically tightened the rules surrounding refugee applications, sent out the message that Canada is less welcoming to those seeking sanctuary, and made life more miserable for those who make it here and are applying for refugee status. In fact, they boast about it. Alexander himself wrote in the Star that tightening the system has saved the government $600 million. But at what human cost?

On the positive side, Canada has been generous in providing humanitarian aid for refugees in the region — approaching $700 million. Many other rich countries contribute proportionately less, or promise but fail to pony up.

Individual Canadians and groups can still make a difference by getting involved with groups like Lifeline Syria, which is working to connect private sponsors with would-be refugees. It has a relatively modest goal of bringing 1,000 Syrian refugees to the GTA, and hopes to act as a model for others across the country.

A bigger collective effort — one in line with Canada’s decades’-old tradition of openness — will apparently have to wait for a new government with a more generous vision. Fortunately, the wait may not be long.

In the wake of an ever-worsening refugee disaster, one thing is clear: Canada can and should do much more