Bramham: Canada isn’t doing its fair share
Too little done: We no longer are who we think we are
It was distressingly and tragically brought home by the image of a toddler, drowned off the coast of Turkey fleeing the Syrian civil war, that Canadians are no longer who we think we are.
If this were our imagined country, three-year-old Alan Kurdi might have been safely playing at home in Coquitlam. But an urgent plea for help by the Kurdi family both here and in Syria was rejected.
The poignant image of the little boy is reminiscent of one from 43 years ago of a Vietnamese girl running, crying, her clothes burned off by a napalm bomb dropped by Americans. The image of that little girl — a Canadian now — helped end a war.
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper recognized the potency of Alan Kurdi’s photo and the refugee issue and jettisoned an expected announcement about money for Surrey’s rapid transit line to defend his government’s record.
He called Canada “one of the most generous refugee systems in the world,” but made no promise to do more.
He talked about terrorists and the need for Canadian fighter jets to continue bombing Islamic State positions in Syria and the 69 special forces to continue training Kurdish fighters.
We are now as much a warrior state as a humanitarian nation. We do neither on a scale large enough to make a real difference.
More eloquently than most, former Conservative senator and cabinet minister Pat Carney distilled a collective sense of outrage in a letter to Immigration Minister Chris Alexander.
“There must be a way for Canada to respond now to the refugee tsunami underway in Europe to reduce the suffering of war weary, homeless, desperate people and bring 100,000 of them to Canada immediately,” she wrote Tuesday night.
(Later, she explained she chose 100,000 because that’s the number of Irish who fled to Canada during the 1840s famine. Her ancestors were among them.)
Carney told Alexander that her earliest childhood memory was of being evacuated with her family down the Whangpoo River from Shanghai during the Sino-Japanese war of 1937 to 1945.
She urged the minister to act out of compassion “from your guts and your heart,” but Alexander responded with bureaucratic, political and ideological pap that — like Harper’s — seems to conflate desperate migrants with terrorists.
It’s not that Canada has done nothing. It is that in the midst of the biggest humanitarian crisis and the largest migration since the Second World War, Canada has done so little.
It’s a symptom of a long-standing process that has made it harder than ever for refugees to come to Canada.
Between 2006 and 2012, refugee claims dropped by 50 per cent, and the number of claims accepted fell by 30 per cent.
A decade ago, nearly threequarters of all refugees used to come with the sponsorship and financial support of the government. Now, the majority — twothirds — must have churches, community groups and individuals willing and able to support them.
As of last week, the United Nations had registered 4,088,078 Syrian refugees. So far, Alexander says 22,000 Syrians and Iraqis have settled in Canada. There could and should have been more except the Conservative government insists that refugees only come from United Nations camps and only after extensive screening.
This year alone, Germany expects to take 800,000 Syrian refugees. Yet even that pales with the burden that has fallen on Syria’s neighbours, whose own economies and infrastructure are near collapse because of the unprecedented numbers.
There are 2.1 million in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, 1.9 in Turkey and 24,000 in North Africa. Many live in horrific conditions and nearly half of all the refugees are children.
Canada’s compassionate history doesn’t require retreating to the 19th century for examples.
In 1957, more than 37,000 Hungarian refugees came on over 200 flights chartered by Canada after the communists crushed an uprising.
Between 1968 and 1969, more than 10,975 Czechs arrived after Soviet troops invaded.
Canada immediately agreed to take 3,000 migrants in 1972 after dictator Idi Amin gave 50,000 South Asians less than 90 days to leave Uganda. Eventually, 4,420 of the 5,700 who arrived came on government-chartered flights.
After the Vietnam War ended, 5,608 refugees came between 1975 and 1976. Another 50,000 so-called boat people were settled between 1979 and 1980. And throughout that war, tens of thousands of American draft dodgers were welcomed to Canada.
Canada has lost its way. But, now that Alan Kurdi’s photo has been seen around the world and the family’s story told, the new Canada has been starkly revealed to us and to others.
We are not what we were and not what most of us believe or want this country to be. It’s something worth talking and thinking about before we choose our new government.
As of last week, the United Nations had registered4,088,078 Syrian refugees. So far, Chris Alexander says 22,000 Syrians and Iraq is have settled in Canada.