Refugees and the long political journey: Martin Patriquin

2015/12/15 Leave a comment

A reminder, as if needed, just how much can change with new political direction, and the ideology and values of the previous government’s restrictive approach. Must read:

Given all this, I asked Vassallo, a 27-year CIC veteran, why the Canadian government took so long to get comparatively few suffering souls to this country. “I can’t answer that, it’s a political question,” he said, with a hint of a smile.

Unfortunately, Vassallo is right, and his non-answer is a reminder of what happens when a life-or-death issue of refugees gets fed into the cauldron of partisan politics, then further distilled by an at times ugly election campaign. In a sense, the machinations by which potential refugees are sorted and selected should be as apolitical as, say, getting one’s license renewed. Yet as the previous Conservative government demonstrated, there was a distinct attempt to shape and direct the work of its civil servants here and overseas when it came to the victims of the crisis in Syria.

Last January, Stephen Harper’s government announced plans to bring in 10,000 Syrian refugees over three years. Yet several months later, only about 10 per cent of this number had been admitted—in part, it seems, because of a directive from Harper’s office itself that attempted to halt the screening process. At the time, it was presented as a security measure “to ensure the integrity of our refugee referral system,” as Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander put it at the time.

Numerous sources, including one with first-hand knowledge of the processing of refugees, said the directive was less about security than about ensuring that Christian minorities took precedence over Muslims. “You got the feeling they were trying to cherry pick religious minorities,” one source said. (Syria, which is majority Sunni Muslim, has a sizeable Christian minority.)

It took the picture of Alan Kurdi, whose lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach, for the government to slacken the reigns somewhat. Because Kurdi’s family was trying to reach Canada, the political intonations on the Harper election campaign were profound. On Sept 10, eight days after the picture made headlines worldwide, the government waived the stipulation that “resettlement candidates” must provide information regarding why they fled their country of origin.

“Going forward, unless there is evidence to the contrary, visa officers will be able to presume those fleeing the conflict meet the definition of a refugee, which will make processing faster,” reads a CIC briefing document.

There is a certain irony in this. The  government to first make a significant security-related change to the processing of refugees—arguably making it easier for Syrians and Iraqis to make it to these shores—was that of the ostensibly security-first, tough-on-terror Stephen Harper. And he did so as a political calculation, out of fear of losing an election.

Meanwhile, the “security concerns” that supposedly prevented the Harper government from increasing the numbers of refugees brought to Canada were seemingly a partisan mirage. “There have been no shortcuts to the process. They’ve accelerated it in the sense that they’ve sent over additional personnel,” Tim Bowen, chief of operations for Canadian Border Services Agency, told me. According to CIC staff, this includes the addition of some 500 officials deployed overseas to help with the effort, including between 50 and 70 visa officers.

Thankfully, there is a happy ending. First and foremost, refugees are finally arriving. Secondly, the Conservatives are critiquing the effort exactly as they should: on purely financial grounds. The refugee resettlement program will cost $671 million. It is a huge amount of money, and Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel promised to hold the government to account. “It is one thing to inspire Canadians, it’s another thing to be accountable to them,” she said.

That Rempel said as much without a fear-mongering whisper about “security concerns” shows how far the party has come in two months.

Source: Refugees and the long political journey – Macleans.ca

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , , , , ,

Inside Justin Trudeau’s ‘turbo-Zen’ army: Wells

2015/12/11 Leave a comment

My favourite quote from this good overview of the Liberal government’s ambitious agenda and working methods. Well worth reading in its entirety:

(Muscle memory is turning out to be a constant challenge for the Trudeau crew as they work with the federal public service to implement their stacked agenda, after Stephen Harper spent a decade trying to dampen bureaucratic enthusiasm. In meetings on refugee resettlement, the Trudeau adviser said, “It became clear early on that [bureaucrats’] overriding objective was not to get yelled at. We had to say, ‘Guys, that’s not how we’re going to work.’ ”)

And this quote on tone:

But much of the tone comes from the Prime Minister himself. In early group conversations in the Langevin Block where the government’s top political staffers and bureaucratic advisers work, Trudeau has often been the one who cuts conversations about the day’s worries short and reminds others to consider the long-term goal, people familiar with those meetings said.

“He’s got 320 campaign promises, and four years to deliver them, and he really wants to ensure they don’t get off track,” the longtime observer said. And so participants describe a peculiar characteristic of the Trudeau government in its early days: despite the rush to deliver on commitments and the early hiccups of botched plans or unforeseen catastrophe, the general atmosphere has been one of eerie calm. Turbo schedule, Zen attitude.

“Totally Zen about headlines,” the Trudeau adviser said. “How do you think we survived the last six months?”

The longtime observer confirmed the self-diagnosis. “If the nanny thing had happened to Harper, his PMO’s reaction would have been, ‘Who do we shoot?’ ”

And on implementation of the longer-term view:

But the long-range focus is not merely a matter of Trudeau’s personal style. It is baked into the design of his government. “Right from the get-go there was a keen desire to make sure we focused on results and pacing of delivery,” Peter Harder, a former deputy minister who ran Trudeau’s transition team, said in an interview. The most visible sign of this is the most important cabinet committee. Under previous governments it would have been called “priorities and planning.” Under Trudeau it’s called “agenda and results.” Its goal is to relentlessly track progress against targets to make sure the government delivers on its agenda items. “It’s never been done before,” Harder said. “Our cabinet committees [in previous governments] have always been focused on incoming events, not on stocks of results.” The agenda and results membership list includes three ministers who are often named among Trudeau’s closest personal confidants: House leader Dominic LeBlanc, Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains.

Source: Inside Justin Trudeau’s ‘turbo-Zen’ army – Macleans.ca

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

Expats may have Harper Tory restrictions on voting dropped, Liberals say

2015/12/04 Leave a comment

To be watched – I think the current 5 year rule is appropriate (it was instituted in 1993 and the social contract reasoning of the Court decision makes sense). Moreover, not clear how many expats would in fact vote (see earlier Reframing the debate over expat voting: Russell and Sevi, Globe editorial for the numbers):

The new Liberal government wants more Canadians to vote in elections and won’t be reviving measures proposed by the former Conservative regime that critics said would have the effect of suppressing voting, the Prime Minister’s Office said Wednesday.

At the same time, a spokesman for the PMO said the government had made no decision on an existing law currently subject of a court battle that effectively disenfranchises expats abroad for more than five years.

“We will be able to clarify our intent in the coming months,” Olivier Duchesneau, deputy communications director in the Prime Minister’s Office, said in an email.

“But we believe that more Canadians should have the ability to vote, not the opposite.”

Two expat Canadians in the United States launched a constitutional challenge to rules in the Canada Elections Act that bar them from voting from abroad. They were initially successful in Ontario Superior Court in 2014, but the province’s Court of Appeal sided with the Conservative government in July.

The two are now waiting to see if the Supreme Court of Canada will take up their case. In the interim, they have called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to withdraw the government’s defence of the legislation if the top court does agree to a hearing.

The PMO said no decision has been made on the litigation or the existing legislation, but made it clear the Citizens Voting Act or Bill C-50 proposed by the former government would stay dead.

Among other things, it tightened ID and registration requirements for voters living abroad. The Conservatives argued it was aimed at preventing fraud, but critics said it would make it harder for expats to vote.

The bill, introduced last December by then-democratic reform minister Pierre Poilievre in response to the initial court decision, passed second reading in May and was being debated in committee. The legislation died on the order paper when the election was called.

“The government is committed to scrapping the Citizens Voting Act,” Duchesneau said.

Source: Expats may have Harper Tory restrictions on voting dropped, Liberals say

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Immigrant groups ask for more time to settle Syrian refugees

2015/10/29 Leave a comment

Provides political cover for the incoming government to deal with operational realities while still implementing change in policy and accepting more refugees:

A national association of immigrant and refugee service providers is asking prime minister-designate Justin Trudeau to extend the timeline on his pledge to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada to the end of 2016, rather than the end of this year.

Two months is not enough time to adequately support and settle this number of refugees, which would be over and above the thousands of refugees Canada has already committed to taking in, the Canadian Immigrant Settlement Sector Alliance said in a news release Tuesday.

Canada took in more than 7,500 government-assisted refugees in 2014. About 40 per cent of those arrive between September and December, for reasons that range from overseas processing times, flight availability and foreign visa offices rushing to meet annual targets, said CISSA chairman Chris Friesen.

For B.C., Trudeau’s stated target would mean about 2,000 more refugees in the next two months, in addition to the 800-900 the province already receives, Friesen said.

Extending the timeline would still honour the UN refugee agency’s appeal asking countries including Canada to resettle 100,000 Syrians by the end of next year, he added.

The settlement workers also asked the incoming Liberal government to prioritize the reunification of refugees who are already in Canada with their families overseas, eliminate the issuance of interest-bearing transportation loans that refugees must repay within a year of arriving in Canada, and introduce a housing allowance to top up existing resettlement support assistance.

Source: Immigrant groups ask for more time to settle Syrian refugees

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , , ,

Newer posts →