Moving into a political vacuum
How to reconcile goodwill with reality of crisis.
No matter where Canadians stand on the latest refugee crisis, they can probably agree on a few simple truths.
First, no one wants to just stand on the sidelines. Canadians want to do something — anything — to help refugees escaping Syria’s civil war if only someone will lead the way.
Second, the Conservative government’s actions — and inaction — don’t stand up. At a time of global crisis and domestic clamour, a heartless prime minister and a hapless immigration minister have lost credibility, utterly.
Canadians everywhere — everyone, it seems, except the federal government — are moving into that political vacuum. A lack of leadership and an absence of empathy have left the field wide open for others to respond decisively at every level of government, and especially at ground level.
Premier Kathleen Wynne unveiled an ambitious $10.5 million program Saturday funded entirely by the provincial government to speed resettlement of 10,000 refugees. Across the partisan divide — from Saskatchewan’s Premier Brad Wall (a right winger) to B.C.’s Christy Clark and Quebec’s Philippe Couillard (both Liberals) — other leaders have taken action. Mayor John Tory also moved quickly to spearhead community support in Toronto.
By getting bogged down in excuses, the federal government failed to heed a fundamental truth: Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.
Here’s another truth: While this is no ordinary crisis, it may be the new normal.
Waves of refugees fleeing peril or migrants escaping poverty will not subside anytime soon. Mass movements of displaced people have been with us since the dawn of history and are in our future. The Syrian civil war started five years ago and produced millions of refugees before the world woke up to a photo of a child’s corpse on a beach.
It is admirable that Canadians are responding with open arms to a seemingly short-term refugee crisis. But it would be naive not to ask what happens when the short term becomes long term.
During a decade as a foreign correspondent I saw enough refugees in camps across Asia and the Middle East to understand what experts have warned about for decades: Mass migrations are inevitable, whether caused by war, water shortages, poverty or climate change.
An urgent humanitarian response is only human, but it is not enough. We must also reduce the causes of mass migrations (conflict and chaos), and avoid making those migrations even more dangerous (by tempting people to start a stampede) because people will die in the crush, drown on the high seas, suffocate in sealed trucks.
It is too easy to utter bromides about open borders — libertarians and humanitarians are quick to say let everyone in — when we know the
knock-on effects could make it worse. How? By encouraging a mad dash that will stoke people smuggling; by creating massive bottlenecks that will delay speedy resettlement; by displacing legitimate refugees who will inevitably be crowded out by the rush of those with more resources to make the leap across an ocean or a continent.
What about the genuine victims of war who languish for years in refugee camps, lacking the connections or credentials to be transported to the front of the line? When we rush to embrace boat people, do we not bear at least some responsibility for rewarding them for taking reckless risks? Yes, many are desperate, but it would be disingenuous to claim that they are all fleeing war for when so many are undeniably economic migrants in a hurry.
In the rush to sponsor Syrians to Canada, relatively little is said about supporting the infrastructure of refugee processing handled by the UNHCR in countries bordering Syria. While it may generate fewer headlines at home, not enough thought is being given to the more affordable, sustainable, realistic (if less idealistic) alternative of funding camps closer to war zones, so that refugees can be repatriated more rapidly if those conflicts subside.
We need to open our hearts to the latest wave of Syrian refugees, but we also need to open our minds to what lies ahead. The crisis is unlikely to be temporary. It cannot be resolved with a few thousand more sponsorships and a few million more dollars, as important as those contributions are.
The federal Tories have missed the boat on the latest wave of boat people, but many well-intentioned do-gooders have been selling us a bill of goods about the refugee crisis. We need to start thinking about what comes next.
It is good to be principled, but we must also be practical. Mass migrations are at the intersection of war, geopolitics, economics, logistics and human smuggling. They defy easy answers. The reality is that refugee fatigue will set in anew, because the flood never ends — it merely fades from the front pages. What then? Martin Regg Cohn’s Ontario politics column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn
An urgent humanitarian response is only human, but it is not enough. We must also reduce the causes of mass migrations