Poilievre’s pivot from migrant issue part of cross-party failure to offer policy solutions

OTTAWA—Back on Feb. 21, before Pierre Poilievre found his political groove with the China electoral interference allegations, the Conservative leader had given the Trudeau government exactly one month to stop illegal migrants from crossing through Quebec’s Roxham Road border crossing. He has not touched the topic since. According to the 2022 report by the International Organization for Migration, the number of refugees and displaced persons rose from 84.8 million in 2019 to 89.4 million in 2020. This occurred while the world was going into lockdown and travel restrictions due to the pandemic. It is estimated that there are 281 million migrants around the globe. This means that 3.6 per cent of humanity is in a state of migration. The majority of the asylum seekers are brown and Black people. They are coming to Canada to escape poverty, war, and violence. Most of which we started, supported or otherwise backed-up: in Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, the American wars on drugs and terror, and our economic sanctions. Compare the migrant source countries with our foreign policy adventurism and the picture becomes crystal clear. Bhagwant Sandhu is a retired director general from the federal government. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade Poilievre, however, seems unconcerned about offering options to solve systemic policy issues. Like his counterparts in other parties, he is consolidating his base. Look at the Liberal record on migrants. Not only are legal temporary migrants and agricultural workers dying under their watch, their record on pre-screened, legitimate international refugees is also nothing short of political spin and double standard. In August 2021, after the Taliban took over, the Liberals promised to bring in 40,000 Afghan refugees. As of now, a mere 28,000 have trickled in. Contrast this to 185,000 Ukrainians who landed in under a year, 603,000 of whom had their applications approved for temporary resident visas, and 922,000 whose applications to get into Canada are currently being processed. The government’s website proclaims: “we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished so far.” The reference, oddly, is to Afghans, not the Ukrainians. The Afghans and the Ukrainians both have one thing in common: they are desperate people fleeing from desperate circumstances. Why then the discrepancy in our treatment of their predicament? The Bloc wants to call in the cops and set up vigilante watch groups to block the pathways taken by the migrants. They also believe it's all an American conspiracy. “We learned this week that the State of New York and American federal agents are driving the migrants to Roxham Road,” they tweeted in French on Feb. 20, adding for extra effect that the migrants are not welcomed because “Quebec is not an all inclusive.” Speaking of which, the latest Angus Reid puts Islamophobia in Quebec at a staggering 56 per cent, while outside of Quebec, in the rest of Canada it is at 36 per cent. This explains to some extent the political posturing on the asylum seekers through Roxham Road. There are 78 federal seats up for grabs in Quebec and everybody wants a slice of the electoral xenophobia. The Bloc may prefer former British prime minister Boris Johnson’s approach. In April 2022, he signed the U.K.-Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership to ship refugees to Rwanda. He got the idea from Israel. Between 2009 and 2017, Israel secretly shipped 4,000 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers to Rwanda. In that period, it recognized only 10 refugees from these countries. Israel’s recognition rate for Eritrean refugees, according to Amnesty International, is 0.1 per cent. In the European Union it is 92.5 per cent. Political hypocrisy is not limited to Canada, England, or Israel. With the Muslims and Mexicans hysteria fully exhausted, Republicans in the U.S. Congress have now formed the Northern Border Security Caucus to complain about cross-border migration from Canada. Perhaps they were motivated by the fate of the Patel family who froze to death, in their ill-fated trek to cross the Manitoba border in 2022. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has proposed updating the Safe Third Country Agreement to allow asylum seekers to make their claims at official ports of entry, instead of entering via irregular crossings. That’s only part of the solution. The Center for Migration Studies suggests that high-income countries need to implement an international policy framework to increase selective recruitment of candidates from migrant countries and then incentivize them to send remittances and to return periodically to help rebuild their countries of origin; and, simultaneously to accelerate the social development of those countries by adapting trade, investment and aid policies in order to reduce the very drivers of migration. Data gathered from the UN High Commission for Refugees shows that as of October 2022 more than seven out of 10 refugees come from only five countries: Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and South Sudan. And, despite the political hype, they are not coming to grab the riches of Canada or the United Kingdom. They are running to their closest neighbours, in Turkey, Colombia, Germany, Pakistan, and Uganda. Solving the refugee crisis requires thoughtful debate, international consensus, and multilateral action. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could lead that approach at the next G20 Summit in September. But he won’t. Like the last summit, Trudeau will likely tackle the issue, if at all, in some form of political theatre. As for Poilievre, he too has moved on. The migrants didn’t offer him half the political cache as China interference. Bhagwant Sandhu is a retired director general from the federal government. Between 2002-21 he held senior roles in several departments, including Fisheries and Ocean Canada, Infrastructure Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat, and Public Works Canada. He has also held executive positions in the governments of Ontario and British Columbia. The Hill Times

Poilievre’s pivot from migrant issue part of cross-party failure to offer policy solutions

There's a lot of political posturing on the asylum seekers and parties seem content to appeal to their bases instead of offering policy solutions.

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Poilievre’s pivot from migrant issue part of cross-party failure to offer policy solutions

There's a lot of political posturing on the asylum seekers and parties seem content to appeal to their bases instead of offering policy solutions.

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