Leitch slammed for Syrian refugee tweet
Ex-Tory leadership hopeful sparks maelstrom online with post about domestic violence
Kellie Leitch, the firebrand who lost her recent effort to lead the Conservative Party, has ignited a bit of a firestorm with her online sharing of a column about a Syrian refugee who beat his wife with a hockey stick.
“A battered wife and a bloodied hockey stick. That’s the legacy of Trudeau’s Syrian refugee program,” Leitch said on Twitter, quoting from the column in the Toronto Sun.
The response was swift and sharp, as many criticized her for using an isolated domestic violence case to condemn what is widely seen as a successful humanitarian effort. Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen, who himself came to Canada as a refugee from Somalia, called her statement as reprehensible as the stick-wielding husband. Alberta’s former deputy premier, Thomas Lukaszuk, said on Twitter that Leitch’s comment was “despicable.”
Some far-right immigration opponents praised her tweet and pointed to the episode as evidence that Canada’s growing multiculturalism was wrong-headed.
Leitch did not respond to requests for comment. The refugee, Mohamad Rafia, pleaded guilty to causing bodily harm and uttering threats. He said he did not realize that beating one’s wife was illegal in Canada, according to Abdelhaq M. Hamza, a physics professor at the University of New Brunswick, who acted as Rafia’s interpreter in court.
“Why didn’t they explain the law when we first came?” Rafia asked before he was sentenced this month to time served and a year’s probation.
That seemed to support Leitch’s largely discredited “Canadian values” campaign, which would screen immigrants for un-Canadian attitudes or beliefs.
But behind the debate is a complex tale. Rafia and his wife, Raghda Aldndal, were the subject of a sensitive and probing documentary about Canada’s Syrian refugees, produced by two Australian filmmakers last year. The film, Canada’s Open House, gives an unusual opportunity to look more deeply into the case.
Dawn Burke, chairperson of the group that sponsored the Rafia fami- ly in the small town of Chipman, N.B., said she used interpreters multiple times to explain Canadian laws, including those against domestic violence, to Rafia.
The larger issue the case illustrates, said one of the filmmakers, Amos Roberts, is the difficulty that many older refugees, particularly men, face in adapting to new lives in a foreign culture. More than 40,000 Syrian refugees have settled in Canada, almost half of them sponsored private- ly by ordinary citizens like Burke.
“To expect new immigrants, especially refugees, to adapt within a year or two is mind-boggling,” said Professor Hamza, the interpreter.
The Rafia family fled Syria for Jordan about five years ago after two of Rafia’s brothers were executed, according to Burke. They arrived in Chipman, and Aldndal quickly found friends, as did the children through school. But the documentary shows Rafia growing increasingly discontent and frustrated as his familial authority ebbs.
The couple’s arranged marriage was already troubled in Syria, and Rafia admitted early on he had beaten his wife in the past, Burke said.
“We made it very clear he was not allowed to hit his wife,” she added.
The family eventually moved to Fredericton, a city where they would be closer to a Syrian community and jobs were more plentiful. But the marriage did not improve and on May18, Aldndal showed up at a Fredericton hospital with injuries from a beating. Rafia was arrested and pleaded guilty on May 26.
Right-leaning media picked up the story, accusing Canadian liberals of welcoming wolves in sheep’s clothing. But few who understand the case see it as an indictment of the country’s multicultural immigration policies or its progressive refugee outreach.
“It’s not a legacy. It’s an exception,” Burke said, referring to the line that Leitch posted.