Canada’s role in the world
Strong, proud and free-riding
Canadians like to see themselves as global benefactors, but in fact they have been pinching pennies on aid and defence
WHEN heart-rending images flashed across the world of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old from Syria who drowned off the Turkish coast, people everywhere were appalled. But the pang of conscience was especially acute in Canada.
That was because Alan, his five-year-old brother, Galib, and their mother, Rehan, all of whom perished, might possibly be alive now had it not been for a tightening in Canadian immigration policy. The boys’ aunt, who has lived in Vancouver for 20 years, had been trying to secure entry for her two brothers and their families. That was a very painful thought for a country which rightly or wrongly loves to think of itself as being a “helpful fixer” of the world’s problems.
As an immediate result, refugees became a bone of contention in campaigning for Canada’s general election in October. The drowned family meant that “Canada has failed”, Tom Mulcair, leader of the centre-left New Democratic Party (NDP), declared. He is challenging the Conservative government led by Stephen Harper.
As well as arguing over who bears responsibility for the Kurdis’ fate, the prime minister and his challengers have been bickering over what to do now. In mid-August Mr Harper said that if re-elected his government would take another 10,000 refugees from Syria and Iraq by 2019, on top of an earlier pledge to accept 11,300 Syrians and 23,000 Iraqis. This week he declined to change that policy although many mayors and four provincial premiers would take more Syrians. Mr Mulcair wants 10,000 refugees to be accepted immediately and another 9,000 per year between now and 2019. Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party, advocates taking an extra 25,000 from Syria this year.
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