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University study attacks government over treatment of children of illegal immigrants

By Russell Grenning - posted Tuesday, 24 July 2018


The University study report was scathing.

It reported, "Asylum seeking children…regularly face incarceration in medium-security-style immigration detention centres" and that minors were left "idle, sleeping or lying on the couches for long periods during the day" and some children experienced "psychiatric and academic difficulties long after detention".

It continued, "Some families reported that during long periods of interrogation and waiting for transport, they were left without food for themselves or their children. One mother was arrested in her driveway while holding her infant in her arms. She was separated from her infant – who was still breastfeeding – for four days in jail."

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But this report last June wasn't from an Australian university about the Australian Government's policy. It wasn't from an American university about the US Government's policy. It was from McGill University about the Canadian Government's policy and practice of it. McGill is the first-ranked university in Canada. There was a predictable uproar.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) ran the story under the headline, "Canada also detains migrant children, sometimes for months at a time".

Canada's Prime Minister, the youthful (at 46), progressive and ultra- trendy Justin Trudeau has been a trenchant critic of President Trump's immigration policies and can always be relied upon to rally to progressive causes. Back in January 2017, Mr Trudeau tweeted, "To those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength." It was a noble sentiment which got Mr Trudeau warm praise from fellow progressives but, unfortunately, too many potential immigrants actually took it seriously and headed north from the USA. Predictably, there was – and is - a crisis.

Coincidentally with the release of the McGill University report, Mr Trudeau weighed in again denouncing the US Government's treatment of illegal immigrants and announcing pompously, "What's going on in the United States is wrong. I can't imagine what the families living through this are enduring. Obviously, this is not the way we do things in Canada."

Well, according to the McGill University study, it is exactly the way they do things in Canada and if Trudeau, who incidentally is a graduate of McGill, wanted to find out how immigrant families manage to live after they are detained trying to illegally cross the border then he could have dropped by his old alma mater for a chinwag with the authors of the report. He didn't. In fact, he studiously avoided even mentioning it.

Then something curious happened. And happened within minutes of Trudeau's statement.

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The CBC which had previously reported the McGill report under the "Canada also detains migrant children, sometimes for months at a time" headline quickly changed it to the much less critical, "Canada aims to avoid detaining migrant children, but it happens." Exactly the same story but with a different headline.

Surely a coincidence of events? Possibly, but that would be really stretching credulity. The CBC, like our ABC, is a government funded outfit (although it allows commercial advertising on its TV) and is supposedly independent although Canadian conservative critics lambast it regularly as an entrenched citadel of political correctness with slavish acceptance of so-called progressive causes.

Then in mid-July, Mr Trudeau announced a Cabinet reshuffle.

Prior to this reshuffle, Trudeau and his government were under increasing attack over its border policies, especially in the wake of the McGill University report. Criticism came from the left New Democrats (44 seats in the Federal Parliament) and from the right Conservatives (99 seats) and both called for an emergency study of the government's response to illegal immigration.

The Ontario Province Premier Doug Ford has also been a bitter critic of the policy saying that Trudeau's government has been encouraging "illegal border crossings to come into our country". Ontario is where the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants arrive, and Premier Ford recently said that this had "resulted in a housing crisis, and threats to the services that Ontario families depend upon. This mess was 100 per cent the result of the federal government, and the federal government should foot 100 per cent of the bills."

Well, what a surprise the reshuffle was.

A new Cabinet post was created – the Minister of Border Security and Organised Crime Reduction - and its newly appointed Minister is Bill Blair, a first-term MP and the former Police Chief of Toronto, Canada's most populous city.

Governments always try and name Departments and the titles of Ministers as part of a strategy to send a message to their electorates that they are serious about issues which will be the responsibility of those Departments and Ministers. This is why Peter Dutton wasn't just named Minister for Immigration but Minister for Immigration and Border Protection in 2014. The Ministerial titles of "Border Protection" and "Border Security" tell the voters the same thing.

But why should the newly minted Minister's title also include "Organised Crime Reduction"? Increasing numbers of illegal immigrants are involved in organised crime as well as rapes, murders and assaults and that has become an issue of concern in Canada. Mr Trudeau knows he has to address it.

According to the CBC Political Editor, Chris Hall, the reshuffle "kicked off his 2019 re-election campaign" and that of the new or reshuffled Ministers, "…perhaps the most significant of all, former Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair is being handed responsibility for border security and reducing organised crime as head of a new department whose precise mandate seemed unclear even to him."

"…whose precise mandate seemed unclear even to him"? This hardly suggests that a lot of thought has been given to just what the new department will do when it is created. Hall continued, "Whatever the role turns out to be in practice, Blair's primary marching orders are entirely political. He's to reassure that the border with the US is secure, that the federal government will reduce gun violence in cities like Toronto and that people entering this country to claim asylum are legitimate refugees."

Even the CBC has conceded "tens of thousands (of illegal immigrants) have made the trek which has stretched social services in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, cities that are housing these people as they await refugee board hearings to determine the veracity of their asylum claims."

And, further, adding to the notion that Mr Blair's appointment had more to do with trying to win political points than actually doing anything practical, Hall wrote, "His department doesn't yet exist. It will have to be hived away from Public Safety and Immigration."

There were critics of the appointment, especially from the always prickly leaders of Quebec Province, the country's only province with a majority of French speakers. They don't seem to like the fact that Mr Blair can't speak French, even though the provincial government is also governed by his political party, the Liberals.

PM Trudeau, when announcing Mr Blair's appointment that a "big part" of his job will be combatting the opposition narrative "that tens of thousands of migrants are entering Canada via dead-end roads in Quebec or farmers' fields in Manitoba are proof the government has no plan and no money to deal with the border crisis."

This is the first time that Mr Trudeau has used the term "border crisis" which is a million miles away from his January 2017 statement that everybody was welcome in Canada.

In January last year, the National Council of Canadian Muslims called on the government to declare January 29 as a "National Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia". This is the day in 2017 when a shooting at a Quebec mosque left six dead and nineteen wounded.

Mr Trudeau's government passed a Motion in Parliament to have the Parliamentary Heritage Committee – which the government controls – to undertake a study into how the government could develop a strategy on how to cope with religious discrimination including Islamophobia. When it delivered its report on 1 February this year it supported the National Day proposal.

Mr Trudeau very carefully has not ruled the idea out but neither has he ruled it in. His eventual decision about this may well be influenced by the fact that Muslim organisations bitterly attacked his decision to establish the Department of Border Security and Organised Crime Reduction as "racism". A petition calling on the government to reject the idea has gained and continues to gain massive support.

The political realities of government and the consequences of not dealing previously with illegal immigration have forced Mr Trudeau to finally, even if reluctantly, to appear now to be doing something.

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About the Author

Russell Grenning is a retired political adviser and journalist who began his career at the ABC in 1968 and subsequently worked for the then Brisbane afternoon daily, The Telegraph and later as a columnist for The Courier Mail and The Australian.

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