Obligation and Opportunity
Comments. Considerations. Questions.
by Kenneth Bagnell
The other evening, just past six o’clock, I sat as usual in our living room. I was watching a CBC interview with one of our most experienced and respected military veterans, Romeo Dallaire. He’s a retired lieutenant general and has the emotional scars that accompany his honored but painful years serving as Commander of a UN peacekeeping unit in Rwanda in 1993 and 1994 during its genocide. (It led to a very serious nervous breakdown and an almost successful suicide in 2000, which he bravely deals with in his readable book, “Shake Hands with the Devil”.
The most admirable aspect of Romeo Dallaire’s life is that, out of all his pain, he knows human social problems can never be ultimately resolved by military might but by understanding and humanitarian action. The evening I watched him he was urging Canada to take in between 80,000 and 90,000 Syrian refugees. In fact Syrians would make a positive contribution: “They will be an incredible asset”, said General Dallaire, “as the Vietnamese were and the Hungarians. And if you want to talk 80,000 to 90,000 we can handle that capacity.” That’s not a sentimental idealist talking but a military general who has seen the world, in one of its most dreadful conflicts.
General Dallaire is not the only military figure to see things this way. He is supported by a respected military comrade who shares his views: Rick Hillier, longtime Chief of Defense Staff, a meritorious Newfoundlander who lead Canada’s service men and women through the years of the Afganistan mission. He too says our country has the capacity to accept and resettle 50,000 refugees between now and the end of the year. There was a strong hint of disappointment in Ottawa’s attitude as Hillier told his interviewer: “I get frustrated by the fact that we in Canada don’t see the leadership necessary to step up and be the great nation we are. We should do more for those poor people, the hundreds of thousands of them that have nothing, fleeing for their lives and needing our help. “Indeed. Every one of us has seen them, and their fleeing, thanks to media organizations who go to dangerous places to report and reveal the situation.
As for the threat of terrorists sneaking in, both Hillier and Dallaire view it as what Dallaire called: “a smokescreen.” Remember these men are not what cynics call “do-gooders,” They are battlefield veterans of many years, one of whom was deeply scarred by his years. No doubt both acknowledge the importance of security checks, which are and will be applied by both Canadian intelligence in the region and security agents of the allied forces. But as Hillier in accordance with Dallaire, puts it: “We have to stop being frightened by our own shadow. We live in a dangerous world. We handle it pretty well. And we are going to take some appropriate measures no matter how many refugees come into our nation.” (To repeat the assurance: a now retired senior editor on The Toronto Star recently said: “All asylum seekers are vetted by Canadian intelligence agents working in the region, in cooperation with the security services of our allies.” Both Mulcair of the NDP, and Trudeau of the Liberals agree with what the seasoned military leaders recommend. Trudeau has set an objective of 25,000. Mulcair is equally positive: “Canadians that I meet with across this country want Canada to do its share. If we’re elected there will be 10,000 people brought to Canada before the end of this year.” His caucus is backing a plan to accept over 45,000 refugees by 2019. Sadly, despite the assurance of the two senior and deeply experienced men -– and broadly affirmed on TV by another senior veteran officer Major General Lewis MacKenzie — the PM in the debate last night, continued to fear monger claiming that his opponents “would have us throwing open our borders… (to) people coming without any kind of security checks or documents. False. I take the view of the three senior officers, men who have had the proverbial “boots on the ground” for many years.
All this is fine by me and I expect most of you but (as I’ve experienced quite vividly) by no means all. The real question we might ask is this: what about the Prime Minister we’ve elected so many times? Well here are the painful facts: since the era of Harper — a Christian Evangelical and thereby one we have a right to think is compassionate as our faith urges –- Canada began to receive fewer refugees with all their pain and poverty. A reliable Associated Press report said two weeks ago: “In times of crisis in decades past, Canada resettled refugees quickly and in large numbers. It airlifted more than 5,000 people from Kosovo in the late 1990s, and more than 5,000 from Uganda in 1972 and resettled 60,000 Vietnamese in 1979-80. More than 1.2 million refugees have arrived in Canada since World War II.” So how about today? The numbers have declined since 2006 when he took office. In the previous year, 2005, under the Liberal government the country received almost 36,000 refugees. It has now declined so much that the UN now reports: “Canada has dropped from the fifth largest refugee receiving country in 2000, to 15th last year…” On the current crisis he vacillates, and is so vague that it’s obviously a tactic of diversion. As the legendary Red Tory Hugh Segal, now Master of Massey College puts it in an essay in today’s Toronto Star: “That narrow view of Canada and its capacity, whether advanced by labour-force protectionists on the left or anti-immigrant bigots on the right undercuts who Canadians are and how the country was built.” Every word is right including at times, sorry to say, his use of the word bigot.
Don’t be too depressed. For in the general public there is still a yearning for Christian social justice for refugees. The evidence? Here it is: Almost as soon as the desperate need was made public the three major Christian churches – to be followed by others – promptly announced not just their agreement with the coming of the Syrian refugees but their specific plans to help fund and accommodate them. Very early in the crisis, the President of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher, issued a detailed document calling for strong acceptance, making specific suggestions as to how parishes across Canada might sponsor a family, “getting involved politically” and providing an interfaith guide: “A Church in Dialogue: Catholic and Muslims in Canada, Believers and Citizens in Society.” On September 3rd, the Primate of the Anglican Church, Archbishop Fred J. Hiltz, called on his people, among other strategies, to urge wide government settlement for the refugees and, “elimination of barriers to the private sponsorship of refugees.” At about the same time, the Moderator of the United Church, The Right Reverend Jordan Cantwell, released a detailed statement not just affirming wide acceptance of the refugees but numerous ways in which United Church people can assist in the process. “We are called, at this particular time,” she writes, “to witness in a concrete way to our Christian faith in response to the needs of millions of desperate people seeking refuge and compassion.” Moreover, the three major faith groups are accompanied by other faith groups, one long recognized for compassion, the historic Mennonites. Back in April it was already encouraging members to welcome Syrian refugees, printing this note in The Canadian Mennonite Magazine: “Mennonite Central Committee is looking for congregations and other groups willing to sponsor refugees from Syria….” I was both surprised and pleased when, on September 3rd, I read a report that one of the most conservative faith groups in the United States, The Southern Baptists, are so concerned they are in the early stages of deciding what action to take. Its news service Baptist Report says: “The world is presented with the worst crisis since World War II… As Christians we must respond…” It does say that Baptist Global Response is now at work in Syria, thus far distributing fresh food, hygienic items, comfortable blankets and even medicines to roughly 4,000 refugee families. Let’s wish them well as they decide their next step.
But there is one church in which, on this issue, I take a natural and justified journalistic interest. I mean Canada’s Alliance Church which some still call The Christian and Missionary Alliance. It’s the evangelical church Prime Minister Harper joined some years ago, after he found The United Church of Canada, in which he grew up, no longer acceptable, given his personal faith. (He’s a member of a roughly 2,000 member Calgary congregation.) I simply wondered, if like so many other churches, his current church advocates for the desperate refugees. Answer: yes and in a big way. It encourages all its congregations to “engage in refugee sponsorship.” Moreover some Alliance people have travelled to the troubled region to serve, some to film the dreadful situation to encourage other church members to help sponsor families as refugees to Canada. There’s more. But that’s enough to raise — courteously I hope — one reasonable question; does the Prime Minister take seriously the views of his own church, a view accompanied by, I believe, virtually every church in Canada? If so, might he simply encourage all Canadians to practice the fine refugee stewardship revealed by his own fellow Alliance Christians.
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All my past blogs are archived on my website: your comments are welcome there: www.kennethbagnell.com.
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