Andrew MacDougall: The Liberals about-face on refugees, hidden away in an omnibus bill, saws at a pillar of their core identity, to say nothing of their brand promise
With everyone busy rubbernecking the multi-car, highway-closing SNC-Lavalin pile up, Finance Minister Bill Morneau went ahead and tabled his budget implementation bill. And buried in that 392-page behemoth was a change to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that would make it harder to claim refugee status in Canada.
And if all of that sounds like common sense to you, welcome to where federal and provincial Conservatives have been for the past three years. Or, as the Liberals used to call it: being un-Canadian. The budget bill sleight of hand on asylum claims follows the Liberals’ earlier fold on the Safe Third Country Agreement, which they are now looking to revise in negotiations with the United States, another step the Conservatives have been urging for the better part of two years.
And what of the mountains of prior Liberal talk of principles, compassion and openness? One presumes they’re buried in the backlog of asylum claims Trudeau said the system was equipped to handle. These criticisms—to say nothing of the changes themselves—should terrify the Liberals who, as they never fail to tell us, are the party of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. One wonders whether the lemmings on the Grit backbench were even made aware of them. It certainly explains why the changes were buried in a budget bill and not debated in the harsh light of day. Opaque ways, my friends.
Now that the media have spotted the change we shouldn’t be surprised if Trudeau kicks Jody Wilson-Raybould out of caucus again to change the channel. Or, barring that, give another $12 million dollar climate gift to a wealthy grocery retailer with a history of price-fixing a food staple. The point being, the longer the discussion stays on the asylum about-face the more Trudeau will sink.
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