Christy Clark announces fund to support Syrian refugees coming to B.C.

Canada’s trade unions are committed to establishing a special fund with the Canadian Council for Refugees to help support the settlement of Syrian refugees in Canada. However, they have put significant financial strain on the many Edmonton families who privately sponsored them; one can imagine how {hard |difficult} it would be to have to have to feed five more mouths at the dinner table.

“At the beginning of the campaign we indicated that we are going to accept more refugees from this region, from Syria and Iraq, that’s an announcement I already made”, stated Harper.

In response to a question about the crisis in Syria, he said, “We as a country have failed to be the country we like to pretend that we are”.

Photos of three-year-old Alan Kurdi’s body washed up on a Turkish beach had galvanized them. Only their father Abdullah survived. The children’s aunt, Teema Kurdi, revealed that the family’s application to join her in Vancouver had been rejected by Canadian Immigration authorities, thus prompting the fatal sea journey.

On the campaign trail, the NDP immediately offered to take in 10,000 refugees, the Liberals, 25,000.

That total amount of refugees in Canada has also fallen, in part because of a drop in refugees landed in Canada that go on to become permanent residents. These events are organized in cities across Canada until mid-October. We have a long and often proud history of caring for the stateless. Any decision to increase the number of refugees admitted, speed up or simplify the admission process, or undertake emergency measures, such as airlifting refugees into Canada, lies with the federal government.

It’s simply not good enough for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose government’s rule changes have contributed heavily to the refugee backlog, to keep repeating his intention to bring in more refugees and uttering platitudes about improving the process. These are claimants who arrive in the country and then apply for refugee status, as opposed to applying while still overseas.

The Greek island of Lesbos is “on the verge of explosion” with violence erupting as the more than 15,000 mainly Syrian refugees push local resources to the limit, the immigration minister said on September 7. This is why we provided funding to Lifeline Syria in April. “CIC works with its security partners such as the Canada Border Services Agency to complete this work as quickly as possible”, the ministry said in an emailed statement.

Another shameful moment in Canada’s history was the Komagata Maru incident. During the announcement, Premier Clark pointed to the tragic story of Alyan Kurdi and his family. Readers will be hard-pressed to find examples of left-wing politicians or their media allies calling on Harper and the Conservatives to mobilize pressure on these states to be more open to refugees. This isn’t an isolated incident. This is a stark change from the mere 19 policy changes between 1867 and 2002.

It’s a pattern that transpired in 1987 when Nova Scotia saw Sikhs on their docks and again when migrants from China reached British Columbia’s coast in 1999.

In 1975 and a’76, and again in 1979 and ’80, refugees from Vietnam flooded out of that country; we took in more than 5,600 from the first wave and an astonishing 50,000 from the second. Our government has detained over 87,000 migrants, including children, since 2006.