Trudeau’s weak stance on U.S. border atrocities inexcusable

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/06/2018 (2738 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It says something when radio talk-show host Charles Adler backs away from calling himself conservative.

The decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to separate children from their parents at the U.S./Mexico border and put them into holding centres led to serious condemnation from both sides of the border. It even resulted in Adler, an unapologetically partisan conservative, tweeting in response to a listener: “Because of my roots I was until recently reluctant to make comparisons between #Trumpism & Nazism. But Nazi propaganda audio, film & print routinely described my family as vermin. If this is today’s conservatism please don’t ever call me #conservative again.”

Adler’s family survived the Holocaust in Hungary and escaped to Canada after the Soviet suppression of an anti-communist uprising in 1956.

So how is it that someone who has so clearly affiliated himself with right-wing ideology could denounce the detention of children, but our prime minister has been so slow to act?

I had been waiting for days for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the man known for his “emotional intelligence,” and for regularly showing his caring side, to stand up in a public forum and forcefully denounce what has been happening.

Instead, on Wednesday, the PM would only call the U.S. policy of separating child migrants from their parents and detaining them at the U.S.-Mexico border “unacceptable.”

Later the same day, Trump relented in the face of widespread outrage to the policy by signing an executive order to keep migrant children and parents together.

“What’s going on in the United States is wrong,” Trudeau said prior to the weekly Liberal caucus meeting, adding, “I can’t imagine what the families who are living through this are enduring,” and saying this “is not the way we do things in Canada.”

This was only a slight improvement from earlier this week, when he basically refused to say anything, suggesting that he didn’t want to get political. That response was reprehensible. And it made me more than just a bit sick to my stomach.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out he didn’t want too much of a dust-up with the United States while Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland is at the bargaining table trying to make headway on trade talks.

At the same time, his government is no doubt reluctant to upend the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Party Agreement signed in 2002. The act means that refugees have to apply for refugee status in the first safe country they arrive in, unless they can prove an exception. To date, the U.S. is the only country Canada has designated a safe country under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Trudeau knows that if he were to consider making any such change, he would risk an onslaught of criticism, particularly from the Conservative Opposition, which already has made a great deal of political hay from the government’s handling of refugees crossing into Canada from the U.S. through Quebec and Manitoba.

Indeed, Portage-Lisgar MP Candice Bergen has lambasted the prime minister regularly for his government’s handling of those coming into Canada illegally from the U.S., claiming refugee status. The influx began after Trump was elected, prompting fears among refugees that their claims would not be dealt with in a positive manner and they would be sent back to the countries from which they had fled.

Bergen and the Conservatives have made significant political points on this issue and the safe-country act would be a political minefield for any government, let alone one that just lost a byelection to the Conservatives in Quebec, a province beset by refugees lining up at the border in tent cities. The Liberals can’t afford to lose popularity in that vote-rich province, which may be growing tired of the NDP and is certainly over the whole Bloc Québécois thing.

But politics is not just about getting re-elected. Or, at least, it used to be about more. Politics used to be about leadership and public service, too. It used to be about doing the right thing.

In 1939, the ocean liner MS St. Louis came across the Atlantic with 907 Jewish refugees on board, seeking safety from the atrocities occurring in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Cuba and the U.S. closed their ports, and then Canada also said no. The ship went back across the Atlantic and landed in Belgium, but 254 of the passengers were eventually sent to die in concentration camps.

The reason given at the time for Canada to refuse the request? Fear that the refugees would take away jobs after a slow economic recovery following the Depression.

Now, once again, this country is pussy-footing around taking a stand against inhumanity because of economic concerns and a slow recovery. Trudeau’s comment in question period on Tuesday was that he won’t play “politics” on this issue and instead will stand up for Canadian values.

That’s not good enough.

In 2015, the world was shocked by the photo of a dead three-year-old Syrian child lying face down on a beach in Turkey. The international community jumped to action, resolving to stop the unnecessary deaths of innocents.

It isn’t unimaginable that we could be confronted by a similar image from a tent city in the U.S., where a young child’s life could be claimed by the oppressive Texas heat. If that happens, once again there will be an international call for action. And then what will our prime minister have to say?

Shannon Sampert is an associate professor of political science at the University of Winnipeg.

s.sampert@uwinnipeg.ca

Twitter: @paulysigh