Harper says news of deaths ‘brings tears to your eye’
OTTAWA — The election campaign was hit Thursday by the horrific photo of a dead boy on a Turkish beach — galvanizing attention on the Syrian refugee crisis and the story of a single family whose hopes for emigration to Canada ended in tragedy.
The crisis unfolding in the Middle East and Europe landed like a bombshell on the campaign trail, prompting party leaders to depart from their pre-planned election scripts, and forcing Ajax Conservative candidate Chris Alexander to temporarily suspend his campaign and resume duties as minister of citizenship and immigration.
The development came after it was revealed the dead child in a photo that has drawn international attention was the member of a family desperately hoping to find a home in Canada, where a family member has been living in British Columbia for 20 years. The NDP would bring in 10,000 refugees to Canada as quickly as the next few months. The Liberals say they would open the country’s welcome mat to 25,000 would-be migrants over three years.
But Conservative Leader Stephen Harper defended his actions. He acknowledged in an emotional voice that, as a father, he found the photo of a dead boy on the Turkish beach to be “heartbreaking” after he saw it with his wife, Laureen.
“The first thing that crossed our mind was remembering our own son Ben at that age running around like that. And I think it brings tears to your eye.”
However, he said the tragedy goes far beyond this one case, and that there are “millions” of people who need help through both refugee placements and military airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.
“Refugee policy alone is not remotely a solution to this problem,” Harper said at an event in Surrey. “It is of a scale far, far beyond that.”
Harper said many people are being slaughtered in Syria, and Canada has a “moral” obligation to help those who remain trapped in the country, by participating in an international military coalition that is bombing militant targets.
The governing Conservatives began a military mission nearly a year ago and six CF-18 jets are among those dropping bombs in Iraq and Syria.
From the start, the opposition NDP and Liberals have opposed that combat mission and said more emphasis must be placed on refugees and humanitarian aid.
“We could take them in immediately, that’s clear,” NDP Leader Tom Mulcair said.
He said the images of Alan Kurdi, 3, on a Turkish beach reminded him of the iconic Vietnam War photo in 1972 of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack.
“Chris Alexander has a lot to answer for, but that’s not where we are right now. We’re worried about how we got here,” Mulcair said. “Today, the question is what is the origin of this collective international failure and what is our current obligation collectively to find answers? Enough is enough. We cannot continue to see these images.”
“Refugee policy alone is not remotely a solution to this problem… It is of a scale far, far beyond that.
STEPHEN HARPER
CONSERVATIVE LEADER