Screening will be ‘strong and robust’: Goodale

Canada’s public safety minister says he’s confident the country can take in thousands of Syrian refugees without compromising national security, while conceding that there’s no way to guarantee efforts to screen the migrants for potential threats would be completely successful.

In an interview on CTV’s Question Period on Sunday, Ralph Goodale said the new Liberal government was sticking with its election pledge to resettle 25,000 refugees from wartorn Syria.

He said officials from his ministry were working with the RCMP, CSIS and international agencies to ensure that security screening would be “as competent and effective as possible.”

He said that although the influx into Europe of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere has been “chaotic,” the process of bringing refugees in Canada would be “much more orderly and controlled.”

“Can it be 100-per-cent foolproof?” he asked. “Well, nothing in life is 100 per cent, but we’re satisfied that the process is strong and robust.”

On Saturday, interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose voiced concern about whether the government could safely fast-track the resettlement of thousands of refugees from a country where ISIS extremists have claimed large swaths of territory in a civil war. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Paris on Friday that killed at least 129 people.

During this year’s election campaign, the Liberals pledged to reach the 25,000 target by the end of the year. Goodale didn’t specifically mention that timeline on Sunday, but said a Liberal cabinet committee was working on the refugee plan and “details will be released as soon as they are finalized.”

Goodale also reiterated the government’s commitment to ending Canada’s involvement in the U.S.-led bombing mission against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been under pressure to reconsider grounding Canada’s jets in the wake of the Paris attacks, but Goodale asserted that the “best use of Canadian resources” would be to train local forces to combat ISIS. He promised that the transition out of the bombing mission would be done “in an orderly and responsible way that respects our obligations to our allies.”