Europe's migrant crisis now a Canadian election issue
Both the NDP and Liberal leaders said Canada should do more to aid those risking their lives to escape their homelands.

thestar.com
Sept. 2, 2015
By Ben Spurr

As European governments struggle to cope with thousands of migrants arriving at their borders, Canada’s federal leaders weighed in Wednesday on what Ottawa can do to help with the continent’s worst refugee crisis since the Second World War.

Already this year 332,000 refugees have streamed onto the continent, overwhelming the government response in some areas. They are coming from countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Eritrea, often risking their lives in the process

Speaking about the crisis while on the campaign trail, the NDP and Liberal leaders said Canada should be doing more. Both took the opportunity to slam Conservative Leader Stephen Harper’s record on the issue.

“Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing horrors: We’ve got to step up to the plate, we’ve got to be part of an international solution, we’ve got to start doing our fair share,” said NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, who was campaigning in B.C.

“Mr. Harper has failed completely so far to do just that.”

Mulcair, however, offered few specifics on how Canada could contribute more.

The Liberals’ Justin Trudeau, stumping in Quebec, criticized the Conservative government for its “meagre” efforts to take in refugees from the Middle East. The Liberals have pledged to take in 25,000 Syrian refugees should the party win the Oct. 19 election.

“We need to provide the support we can, and we need to be making this situation better in various ways that, quite frankly, we’re not doing at this time,” Trudeau said.

Harper said Wednesday that finding a home for refugees is important, but that governments must also tackle the root cause of the problem, which he said was violence instigated by the Islamic State.

“We have plans to do more, but I would say repeatedly that as we are doing more, we can’t lose sight of the fact that refugee resettlement alone cannot, in any part of the world, solve this problem,” Harper said.

Harper has set a target of settling 10,000 migrants from Syria over the next three years. This summer, however, the government faced criticism for refusing to release data on how many had already arrived in Canada. In August, Harper said the government was on track to resettle 23,000 Iraqis by the end of the year.