Not really. Given the rushed deadline they had little choice but to do some profiling. Not a perfect tool by any means and surely just an initial filter in the vetting process.
Nope, profiling is unnecessary and
cruel. They had a lot of choice, given that excluding single males does not achieve any security objectives whatsoever. Yes, they have to make tough choices in tight timelines, but excluding single men was strictly a political, not a security, issue.
At the end of the day, as I have now said repeatedly, it's not the end of the world in the context of a program doing a lot of good. Just disappointing.
Perhaps when they are free and clear of 'sunny' election promises they will feel less pressure to profile and open up the process to vulnerable single straight males too?
Is that a point, or just sarcasm about the vulnerability of Syrian refugees that happen to be single males?
So breaking a campaign promise, pushing back deadlines and making refugees wait is all trifling stuff to you?
Wow. Obviously not, given the opinions I have expressed here (many times now) about the urgent need to bring in the refugees. Given that you have, in contrast, taken the position that we should be
leaving them all in the Middle East and trying to help them there, you have a lot of chutzpah asking that question. Even sarcastically.
No 'overall promise' has actually been met yet, may I remind, not even the 10K by christmas. Let's see what they actually achieve before high-fiving them so enthusiastically. All we have so far is a lot of promises, and already a broken one.
How am I "high-fiving" them, given what I am saying about excluding single males and public sponsorship? All I said that they are still meeting the overall promise - the wording was quite clear that the effort is in progress, not complete. Never said mission accomplished.
As for your claims of broken promises, I just find it odd that you seem to be in such a rush to condemn a government that seeks to be ambitious and do the right, humane thing, yet also looks to re-calibrate if logistics require some changes to the implementation, but not the overall objective. The Liberals thought that some screening could be done in Canada, but that proved to raise too many difficulties. So they adjusted the timeline by less than 60 days. If that is a broken promise to you, then I would repeat what I said above: Tree. Forest.
The Conservatives promised 10k by September, the Liberals are now saying 25K by March. Let's see it happen first. Either the Liberals are heroes and pull it off - hooray - or they were playing politics and had no real idea whether it was possible or not. I hope they are heroes but I've heard election promises before.
Since when is committing to do the right thing and save lives "playing politics"?
All of your statements are irrelevant. This was a national election and both parties campaigned on differing aspects of this crisis in order to win. To do so they had to sway and divide moderate/nonpartisan Canadians. Sure sounds like a wedge issue to me!
No, my statements are not "irrelevant". They are my opinion, which I am entitled to state. Expressing opinions is the whole point of this forum. I wouldn't presume to tell you your opinions are irrelevant. Not sure why you seem to keep doing it.
You've just described an election, not a wedge issue. If this is a wedge issue, then using your logic all positions taken by political parties which differ from the other parties are wedge issues. That can't be true. But if, as you insist, it is, then it can't be a negative, otherwise parties could never disagree with one another.
LOL, some of us believe that arbitrary = not thought through/unrealistic. Let's just leave it there.
Of course everyone who uses the word "arbitrary" only ever uses it if they happen to think the limit or restriction was not thought through or unrealistic. They wouldn't use it to describe things they like. I still stand by my point that people complaining about something being "arbitrary" almost always have nothing substantive to point to so are left complaining about the arbitrariness of it all.
Your thinking here is grossly circular and illogical: You don't want them to prioritize families, but you would concede that they prioritize the most vulnerable even though you concede that the most vulnerable are likely families... and you want them to do all of this but not profile or be concerned about ISIS yet push it all through as fast as possible whether really doable or not. That about right?
I actually said none of that.
I never said that the most vulnerable are likely families. I assume that an assessment of the most vulnerable would usually identify families, but I specifically said that families are likely not the only vulnerable ones, and that single men may have qualified. I didn't even say they shouldn't prioritize families. What I said was that no person should be filtered out at the beginning, because some people who are filtered out may prove to be the most at risk/most vulnerable/most in need. We're talking small numbers here, but principles matter, and we might be leaving someone behind who really needs to get out now because domestically (as Trudeau has admitted - see link in post above) Canadians more likely equate single Muslims with terrorists.
I also never said they should not be concerned about ISIS. Of course, Canada should be concerned about ISIS. I said that the risk of ISIS terrorists infiltrating among the refugees is low, given what the security experts have said, since it would be a cumbersome and difficult way to get into Canada. I never said they shouldn't do security screenings.
I also never said push it all through as fast as possible. Where did I say that? I said that refugees are living in difficult and dangerous circumstances, and we shouldn't be delaying this simply for appearance's sake, which so many people seem to be suggesting without ever offering concrete reasons why more time is needed. I never said that if an actual issue arose, we should proceed as if nothing had changed. This is an urgent situation, where people are suffering today, but that doesn't mean, nor did I ever say, that we should disregard important factors which could impact the success of this whole mission.
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