Big Steve and his side-kick Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander have seriously misread the Canadian street viz the European refugee crisis.
Seems most Canadians just want to help hurting refugees, especially those who find themselves in the headlines now, thanks to the tragic death of three year old Aylan Kurdi.
The Syrians.
Thanks to the photo of Aylan that went viral, Syrian refugees are the cause du jour.
Mr. Harper addressed the issue by re-announcing talking points that he has announced several times before; that Canada will accept up to 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next three years.
In the three years since he first made that promise, the number of Syrians who have actually arrived here has been negligible. In fact, government spokespersons get downright huffy when that question is posed.
It might be 2,000.
It might be 2.
We don't know because the Harper gang won't tell us.
This niggardliness with providing sanctuary to refugees is the worst performance by Canada since the refusal to accept Jews during WWll, documented in Irving Abella's book None is too many.
Since then, every Canadian government, Liberal and Conservative, has atoned for that by offering compassion and generosity to the world's huddled masses.
Hungarians arrived here in their tens of thousands after the 1956 uprising.
The "boat people" of Viet Nam also came in by the tens of thousands in the seventies.
Clearly Canada can accommodate and successfully integrate tens of thousands of refugees in a relatively short time.
The think tank here at Falling Downs has a draft plan pencilled up; we send home half a million temporary foreign workers at the end of their contracts, and replace them with refugee immigrants who are going to make a commitment to Canada.
Not just from Syria, but from Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Eritrea and Somalia.
Sounds like a win-win to me.
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