Roundup: Silence from Trudeau on child removals

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While all attention is glued to the horror show south of the border when it comes to child removals from migrant families, there is a lot of commentary around the conspicuous silence by this government, and from Trudeau in particular. While he said that he’s not going to “play politics” around this, some of his ministers have made comments to the effect that this policy is “simply unacceptable,” but Trudeau is largely mum. If anything, the government has taken a particularly defensive tone by talking about how much work they’ve done to reform immigration detention in this country, and to not separate children from their parents and only detain when necessary (and the record has improved, but it had some particularly dark spots in recent years, from suicides in detention to people being housed in provincial jails when there were no other immigration detention facilities available). There is an assumption that this is because he’s trying to “play nice” with Trump, but I’m not convinced about that.

If anything about the particular problem we’ve had with irregular border crossers over the past two years has shown, it’s that there is a narrative about how Trudeau’s #WelcomeToCanada tweet created the crisis. I’m not convinced that it did, but that’s the narrative. Given this crisis at the American borders, with migrants coming in from conflict zones in Central America, and with global refugee numbers at an all-time high, you can bet that Trudeau is doing his level best to be circumspect in all of his statements, not because of Trump, but rather to avoid another surge of migrants headed for our borders, and into a system that is already swamped (in no small part because they’ve been unable to make timely appointments to the IRB, and because it’s still under-resourced). Now, if Trudeau made sweeping condemnations about what’s happening in the US, that could be seen as another open invitation, which would stress our system even further. Add to that the calls from the NDP and others to suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement – a move that would immediately cause a massive rush for our ports of entry to claim asylum, again, swamping our already stressed system, beyond the diplomatic escalation that removing the “safe” designation from the US would cause. And the Trump administration may be fine with it, and do all it can to push more of their migrants to our borders and say “good riddance.” Regardless, I see Trudeau’s silence as an abundance of caution and trying not to create a larger border crisis than the one he’s currently dealing with, no matter the fact that what’s happening in the States is unconscionable.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1009287591957581824

Meanwhile, as if to highlight Canada’s own record, there was testimony before the Senate Aboriginal People’s Committee about how child removals within Indigenous communities continues to erode them, given that currently child welfare workers are more likely to separate children from their families than get proper assistance for those families in crisis, and that the numbers today are akin to another residential schools system. So, yeah. We don’t have a clean record, and I’m sure this would quickly be thrown in the government’s face if they said anything.

Good reads:

  • The amended cannabis legalization bill passed the Senate last night by a wide margin. It still needs royal assent, and another eight-to-12 weeks to implement.
  • Chrystia Freeland was before the Commons trade committee yesterday and pushed back against suggestions that she wasn’t doing enough about Trump’s threats.
  • The Commons’ ethics committee tabled a report calling on the government to toughen up privacy laws in concert with Europe and extending them to parties.
  • National sporting organizations will lose federal funding if they don’t immediately disclose harassment or abuse allegations to the minister’s office.
  • There were some 4000 opioid-related deaths last year, and the federal government is vowing new measures to crack down on how prescription opioids are marketed.
  • One milk producer says that Supply Management can be maintained while still eliminating trade irritants. The dairy cartel has called him out for apostasy.
  • As the AFN National Chief election heats up, incumbent Perry Bellegarde insists he’s not too close to the government, but that he got results.
  • Here’s a look at how the Conservatives have been courting Quebec nationalists to win Monday’s by-election.
  • Justin Ling writes about the loss of political norms that has led to the rise of Doug Ford, and how that may spread as it has in the US under the Trumpocalypse.
  • Paul Wells writes about Jagmeet Singh’s shambolic press conference about the results of Monday’s by-election.
  • Chantal Hébert looks at the lessons for all parties in Monday’s by-election win by the Conservatives and has some warnings especially for the Liberals.
  • Susan Delacourt suggests that Trudeau needs a calm summer to get back to their “sunny ways,” unlike many of their self-inflicted crises from last summer.
  • My column digs into what that $7 billion fund in the Estimates, which the Conservatives dismissed as a “slush fund” was all about.

Odds and ends:

The Parliamentary Librarian is retiring, and here’s a look at her thoughts on her time in the office.

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