Social Policy in Ontario

Canada should fix refugee system

Posted on September 5, 2015 in Inclusion Policy Context

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TheStar.com – Opinion/Editorials – The federal government should take steps to repair the broken refugee system and make sure that Canada’s historic generosity towards people in crisis is not betrayed.
Sep 04 2015.   Editorial

Mayor John Tory is setting a fine example by helping to sponsor a family from Syria seeking a new home in Canada. He’s one of a group of Torontonians who have committed to help a family find refuge here and support them for the first year.

Tory is far from alone. Lifeline Syria, the non-profit group that launched a campaign in June to bring 1,000 Syrian refugees to the GTA, has been flooded with calls this week in the wake of the tragic death of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, the little “boy on the beach.”

The problem isn’t a lack of open hearts or willing hands. It isn’t even a lack of money. The stumbling block to bringing more desperate people to this country is that it has become next to impossible to connect them with the people ready to welcome them here. The refugee system has become so tangled and slow that asylum seekers languish in camps while would-be sponsors wait in frustration.

This is an eminently fixable problem, and the outpouring of grief at the death of Alan Kurdi, his brother and mother in the seas off Turkey shows there is widespread public support to fix it.

The danger is that this support may be a mile wide and an inch deep. The refugee crisis in Syria and the wider Middle East has been building for years, yet it took the image of a dead boy on a beach to galvanize attention in Canada. By this time next week, public attention and the media gaze may well have moved on.

We can’t let that happen. The federal government, whatever its previous failings on the issue, should take steps to repair a broken system and make sure that Canada’s historic generosity towards people in crisis is not betrayed.

Lifeline Syria itself suggested several concrete steps on Friday that would move things in the right direction. They bear repeating here:

– Cut the overly complex paperwork. Right now, Canada requires documentation from a state or the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to certify that a person is a bona fide refugee. That can be next to impossible to obtain, especially since the UN does not provide proof of refugee status to Syrians in Turkey. Canada should recognize that Syrians outside their country are, given the brutal civil war raging there, de facto refugees.

– Make it easier for Syrians to reunite with families in Canada. That might involve creating a temporary residence permit to speed the reunification process along.

– Increase resources devoted to processing refugee and visa applications in the war-torn region. More officials are needed to speed up applications in cities such as Ankara, Beirut and Amman. Ottawa’s own figures show that wait times now are as long as 45 months, depending on the city.

– Have the government match private sponsorships, above the levels already announced. For every Syrian refugee brought to Canada and supported by private groups such as the one that includes Mayor Tory, the government should resettle another. That would be a powerful incentive for private groups to redouble their efforts, which can be time-consuming and costly.

These are the kinds of things that any government can, and should, do in the face of the crisis that was brought home to us so forcefully this week.

In fact, they are the kinds of measures that Canadian officials took during earlier refugee crises that brought tens of thousands of threatened people to this country. Canada arranged airlifts back in the 1970s to bring Ugandan Asians and Indochinese boat people here, and sent foreign service officers to work directly in refugee camps to process applications quickly.

There’s no reason that Canada could not take similar steps in this crisis, which by sheer numbers dwarfs the earlier ones that provoked our sympathy and support. The only thing lacking – and it’s the essential ingredient – is political will.

The Harper government, based on its performance so far, may be a write-off on this issue. But voters who care should make it clear to all parties that they expect better from whoever holds power after Oct. 19.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2015/09/04/canada-should-fix-refugee-system-editorial.html >

Tags: budget, globalization, ideology, immigration, multiculturalism, philanthropy

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