A Brief from NAL publisher Doug Draper
The headline on the top of the front-page of this October 8th edition of The Globe and Mail reads: ‘PMO ordered halt to refugee processing’.
This image, making the rounds on socialmedia,was taken during a pro-refugee rally in front of the St. Catharines campaign office of Harper Conservative Rick Dykstra
And yes, the story is referring to Syrian refugees and how Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government have been responding to what international aid workers have continued to call the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War in the 1940s.
A short memory refresher may be in order here given how artfully Harper and the high-priced Australian campaign consultant he hired have used the issues of a woman wearing a piece of cloth on her face and other so-called “barbaric cultural practices” to turn the national conversation away from questions about jobs and the economy, student debt, climate change and Canada’s place in the world when it comes to refugees and other global crises.
Back in early September, when images of the body that drowned Syrian boy- three-year-old Alan Kurdi – washed up on a Turkish beach drew tears around the world, Harper found himself on the defensive around his government’s efforts to open Canada’s doors to Syrian refugees after the boy’s aunt from Vancouver, British Columbia revealed the desire of the boy’s family (including Alan’s brother and mother, who also drowned) to make a new home in our country.
Harper and two of his most dutiful Conservative confederates – Defense Minister Jason Kenny and Citizenship and Immgration Minister Chris Alexander – went out after the young boy washed up on the beach to assure us that their government was opening Canada’s doors as openly and generously as possible to the refugees.
One of the photos of three-year-old Ala Kurdi that wrenched the hearts of people around the world.
Then this October 8th, there is the following story (the facts of which have now been confirmed by the CBC) in The Globe and Mail.
Here are the first two paragraphs of the story followed by a link you can click on to read the whole things. Check it out and ask yourself how long it will take for Harper and his minions to switch the conversation back to the niqab and the spectre of a terrorist hiding behind every bush.
“The Prime Minister’s Office directed Canadian immigration officials to stop processing one of the most vulnerable classes of Syrian refugees this spring and declared that all UN-referred refugees would require approval from the Prime Minister, a decision that halted a critical aspect of Canada’s response to a global crisis.
“The Globe and Mail has learned that the Prime Minister intervened in a file normally handled by the Citizenship and Immigration department in the months before dramatic images of a dead toddler brought the refugee crisis to the fore. The processing stop, which was not disclosed to the public, was in place for at least several weeks. …”
Read the whole Globe story by clicking on – http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/prime-ministers-office-ordered-halt-to-refugee-processing/article26713562/ .
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Niagara At Large 
My disgust with Harper grows daily. He is part of an international economic conspiracy that has nothing to do with any benefits for Canadians, only for multinational corporations. I suggest reading “The Canadian Election: Coverup and Steal” in Counterpunch. Long but a vital read.
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My feelings are that Christians, Yazidi’s and Kurds are very low risk to Canada’s culture and ideals, these could be let in and processed ASAP, families of the Muslim faith if they are professional people ( Doctors .Architects or nurses) with family could be vetted for terrorist activities and also let in. I would let the Mennonite Relief or other non-biased NGOs to go to the refugee camps and check them out on site and fly them in. ASAP .We let people in from Sri Lanka ,Tamils, many of whom were gaming the system , as they were the group that started to break away from the National Government. They declared war on the Singhalese population, they were brought into Ceylon under the British Raj, to pick tea leaves 200 hundred years ago, their homeland is in India . also Portuguese came here saying they were Jehovah’s Witnesses and were being persecuted in Portugal, they were not Jehovah’s Witnesses.so there are people who shop the world looking for the best deal , and a gullible system. Canada is not very good at sorting the wheat from the chaff.
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