Security prompted refugee audit: Harper

“Da jia hao (hello everyone)”, Prime Minister Stephen Harper greeted stiffly in Mandarin, addressing a large crowd of Chinese-Canadian voters on Thursday.

He said an audit of the first tranche of Syrian government-assisted refugees was undertaken as a “prudent step to ensure the integrity of our refugee referral system”.

His attacks against both Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau were pointed and blunt. He also demanded that Harper apologize.

“That is abject behaviour on the part of a Canadian prime minister”. “It needs to be clear that the selection process and resettlement for refugees is based on humanitarian grounds and not on politics”, she said.

Ali Kashani, a data-scientist, has run the numbers on Canada’s electoral constituencies (called “ridings”) and concluded that if the candidates from the NDP and Liberal parties in sixteen of those ridings agreed to one or the other withdrawing, the Conservative Party could not form the next government. Harper began with a comment on that Globe and Mail story about the PMO and Syrian refugees.

“Political staff are never involved in approving refugee applications”. “His priorities are in the wrong place”.

Due to the uncertainty over whether there is a deal, it’s unclear when the details would be released to the public and if they’ll be made available before Election Day in Canada on October 19th. After the photos of Kurdi appeared, many more people demanded politicians explain how they would respond to the crisis.

But Harper is fighting back with his own appeal to economic concerns felt acutely in much of the Toronto region.

After facing criticism, Conservative government has also said it would accelerate the processing of refugee applications in an effort to issue “thousands more” visas before the end of this year.

So far, an estimated 2,500 Syrian refugees have been resettled in Canada.

One possible wildcard is the recently concluded negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership – which includes Canada, the United States, Japan and nine other Pacific nations. Good trade can create jobs and increase connections between countries.

“We believe they can make it this year and we will keep pushing for that”, she says. “Stephen Harper went into those negotiations two weeks away from a federal general election in an incredibly feeble position”, said Mulcair.

“They know that through the churches, it’ll be Christians or minorities to come”, he said.

He accused the Liberal leader of following Harper’s lead on TPP. For instance, Cochrane points to stronger support among immigrants from India and Pakistan for the Liberals; among immigrants from East Asia for the Conservatives; and among immigrants from Africa for the NDP.

“This choice is motivated a lot by Justin Trudeau’s leadership style”, the newspaper said. So as a latent Green Party supporter I am taking a two-step approach: elect a coalition Liberal-NDP government that completes the badly needed electoral reform, and open the door for Greens to make a difference on our national stage. When it comes to TPP, he simply had no mandate to sign a major agreement, in secret, just days before an election.

Inside, however, the Saskatoon crowd roared as Harper took to the stage.