By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on July 30, 2018.

OTTAWA—The lazy days of summer are always a good time to draw attention to a political issue. Except when they are not.

Last week’s “emergency session” on asylum seekers managed to secure major media exposure and testimony from three ministers. So the Conservative opposition succeeded in its goal of shining a light into a little-known corner of public policy.

Score one for the Tories. Or maybe not.

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel’s abrasive questioning made for great television. But her vitriol actually detracted from any political message.

If anything, the anti-immigrant tone will do more to hurt her party’s brand than help.

Every parliamentary committee these days is a chance to sharpen up a narrative for party platforms in the next election.

By launching hyperbolic asylum-seeker attacks, Rempel has succeeded in aligning herself with the Kelly Leitch view on immigration.

Rempel keeps claiming that she is in favour of newcomers, but her words of support don’t ring true when coupled with exaggerated claims on the public safety front.

More important, as chief critic on immigration, Rempel is sending a message of support for a minority of Canadians who believe closing our borders is the appropriate response to the global call for refugee assistance.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would love nothing better than to run an election surrounded by successful Syrian transplants in contrast to Conservative messaging that Canada’s doors are closing.

Rempel will argue that her position is not anti-immigration. She always prefaces all attacks with statements about support for the role newcomers play in building Canada. But politics is as much about image as it is about substance.

The Conservatives need to soften their approach in order to derail the Trudeau love train in time for the next election.

Last week’s shenanigans had the opposite effect. The hardline questioning resurrected the ghost of anti-immigrant tirades that played so big in the recent Conservative leadership campaign. Kellie Leitch, campaigning for a “Canadian values test,” got support from party extremists but turned off the country.

In the same vein, Leitch, and candidate Chris Alexander damaged party fortunes last time with the infamous press conference promising a snitch line for Canadians to anonymously report on “barbaric cultural practices.”

The last thing the Tories need is to repeat the anti-immigrant messaging that cost them so dearly in the last election.

Former Conservative minister and political panellist James Moore lauded Rempel’s committee performance, congratulating her for bringing the urgency of the border crossing issue to the table. He specifically cited the concerns of Ontario and Quebec as provinces that are looking for federal resettlement support for the issue.

Quebec and Ontario also happen to be the keys to the Canadian political kingdom. Nationalist Quebec has tried to align itself with the Conservatives on the values debate, but the proposed charter of Quebec Values cost the Parti Québécois dearly in the last election.

And even though the election of Doug Ford would seem to signal a move to the right, on immigration issues, the Ontario Progressive Conservatives were noticeably silent.

Bluntly put, it is impossible to get elected in the most multicultural city in Canada on an anti-immigrant platform. So while Ford trumpeted his credentials as a fiscal conservative, he stayed away from exploiting the immigration question during his leadership race and the election.

That doesn’t mean he won’t ask for money to solve the resettlement challenges. But he won’t be setting up his party to run a campaign on it.

Rempel seems to be ramping up her rhetoric, in the dead of summer, to make sure the Tories are on the “right” side of the migration issue.

But she is on the wrong side of Canadian voters.

When it comes to lending a hand to migrants, Canada prides itself on being a welcoming country. That is not going to change any time soon.

Even the most remote communities in the country are happy to welcome newcomers who bring jobs and hope to economies in decline.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer needs to do a quick autopsy on the results of the emergency parliamentary committee before Rempel’s rhetoric does permanent damage to his brand.

Leaving this critic in her current position merely promotes the notion that a Tory Party, tough on crime, will stop all comers at the border.

Even American President Donald Trump could not withstand the public pressure against his administration’s decision to separate border-hopping parents from their children.

Scheer is doing his best to soften the Harperite sharp edges. Rempel is one of them.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By SHEILA COPPS

First published on Monday, August 28, 2017 in The Hill Times.

OTTAWA—Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.

Such is the dilemma facing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with the increase in ambulatory migrants arriving from the United States in the wake of American removal rumblings.

News reports say that more than 7,500 people have streamed across the Canada-United States border in the past three months. If that continues, it will mean an additional 30,000 potential refugees annually added to the numbers Canada has already accepted from Syria and elsewhere.

But before we start ringing the alarm bells, let’s draw a small comparison with refugee numbers in major European destinations.

According to the International Organization for Migration, 2015 figures reveal about one million migrants arrived on European shores by sea and an additional 34,900 by land. The European border patrol authorities estimate a higher figure of 1.8 million during the same period.

According to a BBC documentary, Germany received the highest number of refugees in that year. Hungary actually had the largest number relative to population, absorbing nearly 1,800 refugees per 100,000 people.

That figure underscores the relative absorption capacity by population, which is likely the best indicator of how easily newcomers will be able to settle in.

The second highest absorption rate was actually Sweden with 1,667 refugees per 100,000 people.

Germany, with the highest rate of refugees in sheer numbers, received 587 people per 100,000. After all the Brexit fuss, the United Kingdom actually only welcomed 60 refugees per 100,000. The average for the whole of Europe was 260 per 100,000.

Compare those numbers to this summer’s Haitian influx, and you can draw your own conclusions.

If arrivals continue at the current pace, the country will receive 30,000 people in a year, in addition to other refugee applicants. That represents an absorption rate of 111 refugees per 100,000 population, less than half of the European average. Compare that with nearly 1,800 for Hungary and you can see that Canada’s commitment is not as robust as we like to think.

Of course, the Haitian influx is in addition to the Syrian refugee commitment and the general processing of immigrants via family reunification and business migration.

But even adding in the 25,000 Syrian refugees the Trudeau government admitted in its first few months in power, the country still ends up at 273 refugees per 100,000, which is less than half of what Germany has received.

Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel characterized the influx as a “crisis” and both opposition parties blamed the migration spike on a seven-month-old tweet from the prime minister.

Trudeau’s #WelcometoCanada missive coincided with an American immigration crackdown announced on Twitter by President Donald Trump. Trump’s move was eventually overturned by the courts. Rempel called the Trudeau counter-tweet “irresponsible.”

I doubt many Canadians would agree with that accusation. If anything, Canadians are proud of our reputation as a welcoming place, and Trudeau’s January tweet was a breath of fresh air compared to the wall-building and door-closing going on south of the border.

Trudeau’s message of welcome was heard by the whole world, including investors, international students, and others who were analyzing alternatives to American destinations in the face of the crackdown.

Canada’s robust economic growth is probably due, in part, to that viral tweet.

Rempel is careful to claim she does not oppose asylum claims but is speaking out because of the prime minister’s “spectacular failure” in managing the process.

Conservatives must tread lightly on their accusations, because by overstating their criticisms, they run the risk of being accused of mirroring the anti-immigrant stance embraced by the American right.

The sputtering of alt-right demonstrations across Canada last week will likely encourage the Tories to shy away from appearing to oppose immigration. As the Parti Québécois government discovered when it tried to win an election on whipping up division through a Quebec Values Charter, political extremism comes at a price.

Most Quebecers, and Canadians, are proud of our reputation as a welcoming country that can accommodate newcomers and turn immigration into an economic asset.

The government needs to stay the course, and proactively manage the processing of refugees, including accelerating the pace of work permits.

All that to say that the current summer crisis, largely manufactured by a slow domestic news cycle, is not a crisis at all but a trend which good planning and border processes should be able to easily handle.

Opposition parties may try to pin this on the prime minister but they should be wary of success.

An accusation of welcoming the world is one that Trudeau would savour.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.