The Written Word
for September 15, 1999

After yesterday’s interview with an expert on immigration and refugees – and thus hearing the history of our law – we now know several incontrovertible facts which cannot be ignored no matter how the likes of John Reynolds and Randy White might wish to.

Fact … it is not illegal to arrive on Canada’s shores, with or without identification and claim refugee status. In fact that’s the only practical way a person can seek refuge. It’s more than a little ridiculous to claim that one seeking Canadian refuge could march up to the door of the Canadian Embassy in Beijing or Havana and seek refuge unless they were an internationally known dissident.

Fact … Canada is obliged by law – its own law – to give each and every refugee claimant (assuming they have no serious criminal record) a hearing.

It follows that to call refugee claimants "criminals" is the worst sort of political hyperbole and unbecoming any Member of Parliament. The matter is so fundamental that I feel safe in saying that any MP who does call refugee claimants criminals is a vote seeking demagogue.

Fact … We can change the law in Canada in two ways. We can beef up the Refugees section of Immigration Canada by providing more funds and people. We can also, if we wish, pass laws denying refugees the due process we now grant them. Parliament can do this by passing, using the "notwithstanding" section of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, whatever laws suit them and the people of Canada. This might prove hard to do because we would have to have these laws apply to everyone, not just those who, from time to time, get the Reform Party’s collective knickers in a knot.

So we know where we are and what we can do.

But now we had better face another fact. We’re going to see more and more incidents of boat people – but the more important thing is we’ll see more refugee claimants by plane, train, car and on foot. In fact, 50 times more refugees come into this country these ways than by boat but because rusty boats make such good television, demogogic politicians can get us all thrashing about, red in the face at the thought of a refugee swimming ashore.

There are plenty of reasons we’ll see more refugee claimants but two come quickly to mind.

First, over the years the western world has done a superlative job of convincing the rest of the world that there is only one place to live – America in the broader sense of the word. Canada has, at least by inference, been part of the Statue of Liberty and "give me your tired, your huddled masses .,.." While Americans have created this impression through Radio Free Europe and other electronic means, Canada too has sold herself as the destination for the downtrodden. We may not have intended that our self serving ways would bring flocks of people to our shores but as the law says, one is presumed to have intended the logical and probable results of one’s actions.

Second, globalization has brought us all closer together. People in countries which had hitherto scarcely ever heard of Canada are manufacturing, at least in part, hundreds of items commonly used in the United States or Canada. Moreover – and this is probably more telling – people in third countries are doing much of the recording of American and Canadian transactions. For example, your American Express Bill is processed in India. We were once in a sort of splendid isolation – of you didn’t count American TV and print media – while now we are falling all over each other. No longer is it rare for Chinese people or Cubans – to name but two – to see and meet Americans and Canadians in large numbers and hear all about North America. Canadian personnel are all over the world and Cuba is becoming to Toronto as Hawaii is to Vancouver.

There is a third factor I’d better spit out. Canada is no longer a white country. There is scarcely a third world country that doesn’t have a colony, for want of a better word, in Canada. The connections felt by the British to Canada in the past are now felt by millions of people from other parts of the world for people of their cultural background now living in Canada and doing very well. One can complain that this ought not to be so – I’m not one who does so complain – but one cannot deny facts.

All I can say in closing is this - if this community is so immature that it can’t handle a few hundred boat people God help us as the future unfolds.