TORONTO – Conservative Leader Stephen Harper remained impervious Monday to passionate arguments from his political rivals that Canada must do more on the Syrian refugee crisis.
Harper insisted that actions taken by his government to date to address the needs of the four million people the UN has declared as refugees from Syria are what Canadians want.
Both Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Tom Mulcair reflected on Canada’s generosity during past times of crisis, including to their own families, but Harper remained focused on the present.
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“We’re not living in a different era here,” he said during the Munk debate on foreign policy in Toronto.
“We’re living in an era where people are fleeing a terrorist war zone.”
Earlier in the campaign, Harper had pledged to accept a further 10,000 refugees from Syria. But the issue was given greater urgency at the end of August, when a photograph of a young Syrian boy dead on a Turkish beach catapulted the issue into the campaign with word his family had sought refuge in Canada.
After that, the government announced changes to Canada’s refugee rules, making it easier for people to sponsor more refugees and also pledging to match Canadian donations to the cause.
Harper said Monday that the new policy was arrived at through discussions with bureaucrats centring around how to get people here faster while keeping the process secure and not spending millions of dollars.
“It is a generous response, it is a responsible response, it is not based on the headlines,” he said.
“It is based on the right thing to do.”
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Harper was on comfortable ground in the early part of the debate, where the focus was on the circumstances under which a government ought to use its military force.
Both his rivals are proposing withdrawal from the current military campaign against ISIL, a position Harper dismissed as unfathomable.
“This is a group that not only left to its own devices would slaughter literally millions of people in its wake but has a stated intention to launch terrorist attacks around the world, including against this country,” he said.
“And it has indicated it has the capacity to engineer and inspire such attacks we see that all around the world. We have a very clear reason for being there, supported by our allies in the international community. Why we would abandon this mission is a question that goes begging.”
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