Al Jazeera Helps Us Out

...with a decidedly negative spin about our immigration and refugee issues, particularly the recent arrival of a boatload of Tamils. I'm reasonably certain former CBCer, Tony Burman, who is now with Al Jazeera, approves of this message:

A hardening of the Canadian heart

The author, one George Abraham, is very likely a Canadian and from the capital "L" Liberal-left side of the aisle, at that. Who else would refer to his fellow countrymen as "more than happy to toe the piper's (Stephen Harper) line", when it is in fact Harper who is responding to long-standing concerns of rank and file Canadians.

He says "But, Canada - which has a reputation for taking in more of the persecuted and oppressed than almost any other refugee-accepting nation - has not so far chosen to abandon its humanitarian impulse", which can be read to mean we've "not yet abandoned the Liberal Party legacy, thank God!" However, it's obvious Abraham betrays a fear that "Trudeau Liberalism" is being eroded.

He engages in flights of fancy, for instance: "There resides in the minds of many Canadians the rather far-fetched idea that the Tamils may set up a government-in-exile in Toronto, which is already home to most of the 400,000-strong diaspora living in Canada" and dismisses one Canadian's opinion - "We do not want our country to become a patsy for those want (sic) to 'jump the queue' to become landed immigrants" as "ignorant".

All told, it is classic bleeding heart capital "L" Liberal perspective and it's good to see it on a website published in a news organ that reaches a large Asian and Middle Eastern audience. It signals to the world, that Canada is not the bastion of politically correct liberalism the left likes to present it as.  Thank you Mr. Abraham.

PS: Another article whose author detects the same thing, the end of Trudeaupeanism in Canada:

"As a public policy, "compassion" is nearly always a fraud; and I have inserted the word "nearly" only in case I think of an exception after filing this column. I can't think of one now."

[---]

"For the Liberals, the sham of "compassion" extended to fundraising events with their goons, and the settled party understanding that any large, fairly desperate, and culturally exotic pool of welfare-propending immigrants will make reliable Liberal voting fodder. Hence side-splitting expostulations of compassion."

And another:

"First, it’s important not to paint all immigrants with the same brush. Second, we have to recognize that we have an immigration system that penalizes the honest applicants and favours the crooks. Third, we need to address the fact that the entire immigration sector has become a huge business where compassion and fairness have been replaced by greed and expediency.

Canadians want to help, but they don’t want to be used and abused by unscrupulous international pirates and local gutless politicians." (emphasis added)

[---]

"The problem is not with thousands of honest and hard-working people who want to come to this country to create a new life for themselves and their families, and it’s not even with hundreds of criminals who cheat the system by hiding behind real refugees. The real abusers are our politicians whose only interest is to take advantage of the patience and good hearts of Canadians to advance their political ambitions, and some unscrupulous lawyers and consultants whose only aim is to make money by exploiting the misery of people around the world.


I’m surprised that only 63 per cent of Canadians are saying they’ve had enough of this." (emphasis added)

Who would have thought, eh? Those poor Tamils huddled in detainment centres out on the British Columbian coast, have sparked a debate that strengthens the Conservative side of the aisle and emits signals that capital "L" liberalism in Canada, at least as it's been known for a half century or more, may be almost dead.

For the record, I do hope the majority of those Tamils are accepted and that the vetting process we're putting them through is up to the job of weeding out the undesirables. Either way, we need a massive, deep rethink and overhaul of our immigration and refugee policy and Harper's Conservatives seem to be the only party with the balls to admit it.