Who decides who gets to come live in Canada?
Who do you think should decide who gets to come to live in Canada?
Should it be the criminals and terrorists who smuggles hundreds of people to our shores?
Or how about three Supreme Court judges, back in 1985, who decided to give foreigners the right to sue our country under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
I think the decision should be made by our duly-elected lawmakers, namely Parliament. And given that the current laws clearly aren't working, they ought to fix those laws. Here are my two recent Sun columns on the subject. I was also on Evan Solomon's show on CBC talking about it -- you can see that debate by clicking here, and fast-forwarding to 20 minutes into the show. Watching the clip again, I'm worried that I've become too liberal and agreeable. What do you think?
Great news for health care!
The Victoria General Hospital is reopening a whole ward that had been shut down. They’re even contemplating dusting off an extra emergency department. No more waiting lists in that B.C. city!
Just joking.
The VGH is indeed doing all of that, but it’s not for mere Canadians.
It’s for a ship of 490 Tamils from Sri Lanka who decided they’d like to move to Canada, but don’t want to bother asking us first, or waiting in line like everyone else.
Reports from the ship say there was an outbreak of tuberculosis.
It’s a safe bet the B.C. department of health didn’t set aside millions of dollars in their budget for that Third World disease.
No problem — just take it away from MRIs or cataract surgeries. No one will notice, and if they do, let’s just call them racist.
Question: If a Canadian waiting for surgery were to get on that boat, could he jump to the front of the health-care line, too? Or is that privilege only for non-citizens, non-taxpayers?
The ship, the MV Sun Sea, was not originally destined for Canada. We’re an awfully long journey from Sri Lanka, an island country just off the tip of India.
No, they were en route to Australia, but changed course when their captain decided Australia’s navy would intercept the ship and turn it away. Canada, internationally known as a soft touch with generous welfare and free health care, was the obvious alternative.
Question: If Australia’s left-wing Labour government is willing to defend its shores, why is our right-wing Conservative government unwilling to do so?
Our navy didn’t stop the Tamils. We escorted them in, like ushers at the theatre.
Sri Lanka is not a nice place to live, in part because of the 30-year civil war waged against it by the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist organization.
More than 80,000 people have been killed in that war, but in May 2009 the Sri Lankan army finally crushed the Tamil stronghold on the island and killed its leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran.
Still, terrorists continue to organize and fundraise, especially in Toronto where 200,000 Tamils live.
But with the war over, life in Sri Lanka has improved — so much so that the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees says the security situation there is “greatly improved,” and countries of the world should no longer presume someone fleeing Sri Lanka is a genuine refugee.
Question: Why are we pretending these Tamils are refugees, when even the bleeding hearts at the UN don’t?
Let’s ask Gurbax Singh Malhi, a Liberal MP who spoke at a Tamil Tiger rally on Parliament Hill last March, surrounded by the terrorist group’s flags and portraits of Prabhakaran.
“You’re here today for a great cause,” he said. “I am helping you guys, I’m behind you because you’re fighting for the right cause.”
Question: What cause was Malhi referring to? The terrorist war in Sri Lanka? Or the cause of 200,000 Toronto Tamils voting for Malhi’s party?
Let’s do what Australia does. They have a small island 2,600 km off the coast of Perth. It’s actually closer to other countries, like Indonesia.
Australia built an 800-bed holding centre on the island. It’s not a prison, but it’s not a resort either.
When ships full of gatecrashers are caught, they’re steered to Christmas Island, which is not considered Australian soil from an immigration point of view.
They wait there until their refugee claims are processed — and are kicked out if they’re bogus. No living it up in the big city, no disappearing into a 200,000 person diaspora.
Let’s build a Christmas Island. We can do it on one of our remote islands off the West Coast, maybe in the Queen Charlottes.
Food and medicine, immigration officials and CSIS — and no legal rights to anything more, not even to vote for Mr. Malhi.
And here's the latest:
A tie vote at the Supreme Court 25 years ago doomed us to accept the ship of 490 Tamils that arrived in Victoria last week.
In a 1985 case called Singh v. Minister of Employment and Immigration, the court ruled that our Charter of Rights applied to foreigners, not just Canadian citizens.
Foreigners overseas could now use the Charter to enforce their “rights” against our country.
The six judges hearing that case were split on the subject, three against three. But a tie is broken by the Chief Justice. So one, unelected man changed Canada’s immigration system, granting foreigners the right to sue their way into our country, from wherever they might be in the world.
Needless to say, it has been a 25-year party for lawyers.
So why shouldn’t human smugglers get into the game?
Estimates are that the traffickers behind the Tamil ship made $20 million in profits — either for their own pockets, or to fund the terrorist Tamil Tigers.
After being held briefly, the 490 will be let go, to collect welfare, medicare and child care benefits for the years it will take before their refugee cases are heard. That’s what happened to the 76 Tamils who landed on a ship last October. When Canadian officials didn’t have enough evidence to prosecute suspected terrorists, they were simply let go.
That’s how it ought to be for citizens: If the government can’t prove you’re a terrorist, you ought to be able to go about your business. But it’s ridiculous that border police who can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a foreign gatecrasher is a criminal can’t still turn that person away.
It’s absurd. How could Canada prosecute a Tamil stow-away here in Canada for crimes committed overseas? Are we seriously expected to fly in witnesses from Sri Lanka?
Australia, which is much closer to the sources of boat people, has tried two solutions, both of which could work for Canada, were it not for the Singh decision.
Australia set up immigration processing centres in other countries, such as Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Purported refugees could apply from there; they just couldn’t get into Australia until they were certified as legitimate.
Australia has since consolidated its processing on its own territory, on remote Christmas Island.
Canada could set up our own Christmas Island. Or we could have Nauru or another country do it for us. Or we could even ask the Australians to do ours, too. Even if we paid our allies $20,000 per migrant to do the work, it would be cheaper than processing them here — and that’s not counting social services.
Of course, the Singh decision would be invoked to declare such solutions unconstitutional. So the terrorists and traffickers would continue their profitable shipments. And dozens of ships would follow, with thousands of more queue-jumpers.
Unless our government invoked section 33 of the Charter, called the notwithstanding clause. It was put there by Pierre Trudeau and the premiers for cases just like this, when courts are out of touch with reality. Section 33 would suspend the Singh decision for five years — long enough to see if a Canadian Christmas Island would work.
Would the opposition parties accept the use of section 33? Or would it force an election?
Better that 33 million of us get to decide in 2010, rather than one man back in 1985.
Correction: I just re-read the Singh decision in full, and I regret that I got a fact wrong in the column. I wrote that the case was three judges for, three against. That's wrong -- all six judges were for giving foreigners legal rights; only three cited the Charter, but the other three cited the Bill of Rights. I'll make a correction in my Sunday column. I should have known better!
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