Asylum seekers not to blame for shelter crisis

When my father’s grandparents arrived in Britain in the 1890s from Eastern Europe, they were not always treated verywell. They spoke mainly Yiddish, they looked strange and different, and they were not Christian or Anglo-Saxon.

But it wasn’t intolerable and popular confusion and even resentment is sometimes to be expected. What did shock them were the politicians, people of prestige and privilege, who announced that my great-grandparents were criminals, dirty and diseased, and religious fanatics. One ranted in the House of Commons about how these newcomers kept coal in the bath. A strange obsession for a Tory MP, especially as caring about fossil fuels and the environment has never really been their thing!

Which brings me to the newly elected Doug Ford administration in Ontario, and one of its first major announcements. It would, it gleefully announced last week, be withdrawing the province’s co-operation with the federal government over asylum-seekers.

The appallingly eager Lisa MacLeod, minister of children, community and social services, accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of making a “choice” to welcome illegal border-crossers and argued that Ontario shouldn’t have to pay for it. “He was the one that tweeted out that everyone was welcome here, and, as a result of that, we’ve had thousands of people cross the border illegally and it’s putting a strain on many of our public resources,” she proudly explained.

Trudeau revealed a little later that Ford, and one assumes MacLeod, didn’t quite understand Canada’s legal obligations to the UN Convention on Refugees, but then when did ignorance prevent bombast from Ford and his people? The truth, and one that surely even MacLeod must realize, is that Trudeau had been responding to the naked bigotry of Donald Trump by juxtaposing Canada’s tolerance and civility with the current American climate of hysteria and xenophobia. And God bless him for it.

The Ontario government’s media people then went into high gear, complaining that Toronto’s shelter system was full because of asylum seekers. Simon Jefferies, the premier’s press secretary, had the audacity to argue that, “This has resulted in a housing crisis, and threats to the services that Ontario families depend on.”

This from a party that wants to cut funding, and has done nothing to expand social housing shelters; and from a leader who, when he was a local councillor, said a home for developmentally disabled youth in his ward would be a “nightmare” for the neighbourhood.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking. The problem is not the number of people but the number of shelters, and to blame the newcomer is dangerous and horribly un-Canadian. We have had a homeless crisis for decades, and long before there were people at the Canadian border. This is not about caring for the homeless but trying to govern by division, and gain popularity by scapegoating.

Much of this, of course, was about optics, as it often is with Ford and his alleged nation. It was supposed to embarrass Trudeau and to appeal to the low and often nasty base that wants to “Make Ontario Great Again” and is terrified of change, and of long-silenced minorities having a voice. Scrap sex education, give the police “more power,” defund everything possible, and return to a time that never was. First on the list, apparently, keep people out.

I accuse nobody of racism and it’s selfevident that we have to control our borders and have intelligent policies, but when politicians who should be responsible and wise use immoderate and inflammatory language and exploit the acutely sensitive issue of migrants and refugees as a political weapon, we are in enormous trouble.

The past few days have seen an unleashing of cruel and threatening language on social media around this issue, with conservative keyboard warriors feeling empowered by what has gone on at Queen’s Park.

Now is the time for good people, whatever their party, to act with nobility, especially if they have power. Take the discussion out of the gutter, speak of people as individuals rather than as a faceless mass, and empathize with those less fortunate than you. And always remember that nobody keeps coal in the bath — they never did, they never will.