Refugee health cuts ideological

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/11/2014 (3985 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CANADA’S immigration minister truculently announced Tuesday that the government will comply with a Federal Court ruling obliging it to provide health care to asylum-seekers, for now. Chris Alexander also said the Harper government is appealing the decision.

The decision of the federal government to cut funding in the first place is baffling, particularly to those who provide services for refugees in Canada. Moreover, it is disingenuous to spin the reason for axing the program as economic rather than what it is, ideological.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada announced in 2012 it would no longer pay for health benefits for refugee claimants and privately sponsored refugees the first year they are in Canada.

The decision was challenged in the Federal Court, which determined the proposed changes to the Interim Federal Health Program was a violation of charter rights. On Tuesday, the federal government announced it would once again provide health benefits, but not for privately sponsored refugees. Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care, one of the applicants in the Federal Court case, called this a partial victory, but remain baffled by the rhetoric coming from the Harper government.

Mr. Alexander denounced the finding, saying it is offside with Canadians’ views and will cost taxpayers millions a year.

There’s no indication the various monetary figures bandied about are accurate. In the decision, Justice Anne Mactavish made it clear the federal government did not provide data that would indicate shelving these benefits to refugees would translate to any type of saving. And it puts more pressure on the provinces to pick up the slack.

This is untenable, particularly in provinces such as Manitoba; this province takes in more refugees per capita than any other. When the feds pulled the plug on health benefits in 2012, the Manitoba government stepped in and took over, partly out of a moral obligation but also because not providing basic health care now means higher health-care costs in the future. It’s been difficult to determine how much this cost the province.

Moreover, the federal minister’s assertion that this flies in the face of Canadian values doesn’t seem valid. For many Canadians, particularly young Canadians, the charter values are seen as Canadian values. A violation of these charter values by the federal government should be seen, then, as an affront to Canadians.

The blowback from Harper’s base has been that refugees are getting free services that many Canadians themselves must pay for. And Meb Rashid, the medical director of Crossroads at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto which provides health care for refugees, says the Conservatives may be playing up this angle to bolster their political base. Dr. Rashid also says the federal government is being highly hypocritical.

“The government is pushing private sponsors to do more in dealing with Syrian refugees at the same time, providing less support. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Dr. Rashid has it right. It doesn’t make sense.

On one hand, the Harper government is proud of its commitment to protecting the human rights and other interests of citizens in other countries, the most recent example of which has been sending Canadian Forces to combat in Iraq and Syria in a bid to stop militants of the Islamic State.

On the other hand, it isn’t willing to commit to providing refugees from Syria with health-care resources when they arrive here under private sponsorship.

As Justice Mactavish points out, the Harper government “intentionally set out to make the lives of these disadvantaged individuals even more difficult than they already are. It has done this in an effort to force those who have sought the protection of this country to leave Canada more quickly, and to deter others from coming here to seek protection.”

That flies in the face of the values most Canadians hold near and dear.