A
Real Change in Politics since August
November 2015
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What a difference a few months makes. My
cynicism about Canadian politics is
confounded. The Harper government has gone.
A Liberal government under Justin Trudeau is
in power. My policy hopes are part of the
platform of the Trudeau government.
Refugees hit the headlines twice. First,
during the campaign. The media pictured a
dead child on a beach from a boat of
refugees hoping to enter Europe via Greece.
The child's aunt lived in Canada and had
tried to sponsor that child and family.
Supportive public outpourings of compassion
for resettling Syrian refugees drew a
promise to resettle 25,000 refugees from the
Liberal campaign. In mid November, after a
terrorist attack in Paris, came second
thoughts about Syrian refugees.
The 2015 Canadian Federal Election
The wisdom of hindsight makes the election
result seem inevitable. Both NDP and Liberal
opposition parties offered a progressive
shift away from the Harper government. It
seems as if the first half of the election
was required for public mood to shift in
favour of that, first towards the NDP, but
then with a rapidly learning Trudeau, the
mood swung to his promise of real change and
away from the rather unfocused muddle of NDP
promises. Trudeau took a majority, reducing
Conservatives to the former 100 seat status
of the NDP and cutting the NDP down to some
40 seats.
Real Changes in the Wind
There are already changes. Scientists can
speak again. Ministers can speak and have
some evident authority. They were given
published letters outlining what is expected
from each of them. There will be further
effort to address burning of fossil fuels -
but not as dramatically as is necessary. The
UN Declaration on the Rights of Aboriginal
Peoples will be the basis of the future of
reconciliation. There will be some increase
in tax on the very rich - but based on
income rather than wealth. The real
challenge is to put a progressive tax on
total wealth. The Citizenship Act that
allows dual nationals committing terrorism
to be stripped of Canadian Citizenship and
deported will go. The pledge to bring 25,000
Syrian refugees before the year-end may come
to pass. The latest trade agreement appears
to be an immovable legacy from Harper. US
President Obama has been quoted as telling
Trudeau the agreement was agreed to and
can't now be changed.
The Rise, Fall and Rise of Refugee
Solidarity
The huge swell of support during the
election campaign for resettling was
surprising. For me it was almost obscene in
contrast to the lack of any reference to
calls for talks to seek peace to resolve the
outrageous conflict in Syria that is
producing many refugees. Conflict is fanned
in Syria by the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia,
Iran - to name a few.
After the election there were some concerns
about the speed and feasibility of such a
resettlement. Then came the mid-November
terrorist attacks in Paris. Suddenly the
mood changed. In fairness, the mood was
fanned internationally by the illogical
comments from the US Republican party.
Presidential candidates called for, and the
US House of Representatives voted for
stopping US resettlement from Syria unless
it was doubly vetted for terrorism. The
facts that the terrorists were European, not
Syrian, and that refugees have not been a
source of terrorists, count for little.
Indeed, there have been enough US crazies to
carry out some pretty awful shootings in the
US without any refugees from anywhere.
Paris Terrorist Attacks, Attacks
against Muslims and Canadian Solidarity
There was an unfortunate aftermath of the
Paris attacks. It seems this became a
license for frightened Canadians to speak
and write thoughtless hateful anti-Muslim
things, burn a mosque in Peterborough
Ontario and attack a Muslim woman picking up
her child from school in Toronto. Somehow,
it seemed as if Muslims were expected to
apologize for the fact that their community,
too, has crazies.
The good news is that by late November there
was pushing back on this, though no doubt a
lot of Canadians have fallen for the US
line. Remarkably, mainstream Canadian media
and a number of Canadians have found in this
tension a formulation of Canadian
nationalism around solidarity with
diversity: a Newfoundland Human Rights
leader who had come as a child refugee from
Kosovo wrote an Opinion piece in the Globe
welcoming an imaginary new Canadian asking
him or her to be him or herself to add to
the diversity; Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi
told his interviewer that he was the elected
Mayor of a multi-cultural city and had no
qualification to act as a Muslim
spokesperson; four McGill University
students did a video piece of their flash
show on the Montreal Subway wearing T-shirts
declaring they were best friends - from
Paris, Cairo, New York, Turkey.
Where Next in Migrant and Refugee
Affairs?
The big shift has to be towards equal
treatment and non-discrimination. When the
Minister said that the Citizenship Act
should have only one kind of citizen - he
put his finger on it. We treat any
terrorists with a second nationality like
those who have no other potential
citizenship - we put them in jail. Citizens
are treated equally - same crime same
consequence. That thinking should be taken
to international migration management
meetings, to the British who have such
illegal processes, and to the French who are
contemplating introducing them.
The same crime same punishment thinking
should extend to non-citizens who should be
treated as citizens are. They should not
face additional jail and deportation. They
should not face procedures with trial and
appeal protections inferior to Canadian
norms. The Inter-American Commission
on Human Rights has recognized that
deportation after a crime cannot be
separated from the criminal process that
should bring to bear all criminal fair trial
standards. Moreover, the Commission has
pointed out that the vulnerable nature of
migrants and asylum seekers calls for at
least the full slate of components of a
criminal fair trial process to adjudicate
any right at issue.
This is not only a matter of rights: it is a
matter of logic. Sending or abandoning
people overseas on account of a crime or
designated terrorist activity does little to
prevent further crime or terror. Such people
have little choice but to end up in
organized crime or in terrorizing militias
in parts of the world where governments are
weaker and the UN is trying to strengthen
governments so as to build peace. Better to
put non-citizens in jail just as we would
Canadians. But perhaps more work on
rehabilitation is due.
There is another level of unequal treatment
that is inappropriate. For some migrants and
asylum seekers defined there is a tribunal
that checks the safety of a proposed
deportation and offers an appeal on the
merits. Some are categorized and blocked
from this tribunal for reasons of politics
with respect to a country they came from or
for reasons of historic processing schemes.
Both are inappropriate. The risks that are
at issue should determine the level of
process. Deportation that amounts to exile
is a terrible archaic consequence. Moreover,
as the Inter-American Commission put it,
since all are part of a vulnerable group of
persons, they all call for detention and
deportation procedures that include at least
all the minimum components of a criminal
fair trial procedure: an independent hearing
and an appeal on the merits. The Immigration
and Refugee Protection Act should be
re-written to reflect this.
