Ex-PM blasts Harper over refugees’ plight in Europe
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CANADA: FORMER Canadian Prime Minister has slammed the incumbent for not doing enough to help on the refugee crisis.
Many refugees – mainly from Syria and Iraq – who ran away from the war-torn and ISIS invaded countries are facing crisis in Europe as some of the countries have closed their borders against them, but Germany had taken more of them lately.
The lawyer and author Jean Chrétien also accused Stephen Harper of
abandoning Canada’s long-held tradition of helping the refugees.
The ex-Prime Minister, who was campaigning in Hamilton, Ontario Province in support of Liberal candidate, Justin Trudeau, said that Canada’s response to the plight of the refugees was embarrassing.
He claimed that the posture of the Harper’s Conservative government had damaged the reputation of the country at the international arena.
“Everywhere I go, they say, ‘What’s happening to Canada?” Chretien said. “Where is the Canada that we have known?”
Chretien, who was a Liberal Prime Minister from 1993 to 2003, recalled that in the past Canada had welcomed several thousands of refugees, particularly from Eastern Europe, Vietnam and Uganda.
“And there was no debate,” he said. “There was no controversy.”
“It was Canada opening the heart,” Chretien said, adding: “It was what Canada was in those days.”
It would be recalled that following the refusal of the Federal Government to help the refugees, the Ontario government waded in and promised to spend $10.5 million (N1.19 billion) to resettle some of them in the province.
Premier Kathleen Wynne said – going by the pitiable and unbearable plight of the refugees – her government would spend the money to welcome 10,000 displaced Syrians.
Syria, under President Bashaar al-Assad, had plunged into war since 2011 with several hundred thousands of elderly ones, men, women and children dead and multitudes displaced.
Wynne, who noted that Ontario Province cannot directly move the Syrians into Canada due to an existing federal law, promised that her government would make use of relevant bodies and organisations that are in better positions to sponsor refugees to Canada.
The attention of the world shifted more to the Syrian refugees barely three
weeks ago when the photo of a three-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, went
viral, showing the dead body of the toddler by the river bank in Turkey.
The gory picture was greeted with outrage and condemnation, particularly when the father of the boy blamed the Prime Minister Stephen Harper government for refusing to grant their request to migrate to Canada to join their family members who had agreed to sponsor them.
They claimed they applied last May, but the Harper government refuted the claim.
The Premier said that the fund would be used to settle the Syrians in the province, adding that $2 million would also be earmarked for prompt humanitarian aid overseas.
A highly disturbed Wynne, on seeing the picture of the drown boy, lamented the plight of the Syrians and said the world cannot standby and watch the sufferings of the refugees.
But she added that all efforts to be carried out by her government would need the backing of the Harper-led Federal administration – in line with the extant law regarding immigration.
