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Sure, being poor in Canada is probably better than being poor in Syria. But is this any basis for a rational refugee policy?

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Though the idea of doubling the number of asylum seekers and refugees admitted to Canada, as the Liberals intend to do, may sound nice, it ignores the reality that many of them will face poor outcomes once they arrive, residing in homeless shelters and living off the largesse of the state.

On June 18, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino announced ambitious new targets for the number of protected persons refugees and asylum seekers who are given leave to reside in Canada while their cases are being decided and their families who will be admitted to Canada. The number will go up from 23,500 in 2020, to 45,000 in 2021 (Canada has admitted an average of 30,000 in recent years).

In making the announcement, Mendicino claimed that the success refugees see in Canada is a reason that Canadas light shines brightly. He added that, Weve seen refugees give back to their new communities and their countries, even during the pandemic.

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This stirring rhetoric from the minister is unfortunately not always matched by the reality on the ground. A number of recent studies document that a growing number of refugees and asylum seekers wind up homeless, increasing the burden on a system that is already stretched thin, and has only become worse throughout the pandemic.

According to 2019 data from the City of Toronto, 40 per cent of individuals living in the citys homeless shelters were refugees and asylum claimants. Among families staying in Toronto shelters, in 2018, the city noted that refugees and asylum claimants represented a staggering 80 per cent of the total. Similarly, a study of Ottawas homeless shelters in 2018 revealed that almost a quarter of those using the shelters were refugees or immigrants.

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While we do not have more recent data, a walk around the downtown core of any major Canadian city will tell you that the problem of homelessness has worsened. With shelters bursting at the seams, and many people refusing to live in such cramped conditions during a global pandemic, many have spilled out onto the sidewalks and into public parks.

There are sections of my Ottawa neighbourhood of ByWard Market, which is home to most of the citys shelters, where an average person simply cannot walk safely. Illegal tent cities have become commonplace.

Theres a serious disconnect between the Trudeau governments progressive rhetoric on admitting refugees and the reality that so many of them face after they arrive in Canada. The problem is made worse by the fact that, in addition to those who enter Canada through official channels, an increasing number of asylum seekers enter irregularly, most by crossing the land border with the United States.

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Asylum seekers have learned that they can bypass Canadas Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States which stipulates that asylum seekers will be turned back if they try to cross the border at official crossings by entering the country elsewhere along our long, undefended border.

Unlike permanent residents, who qualify based on their skills or are transitioning from study or work permits, refugees, almost by definition, are fleeing their home countries out of desperation and do not necessarily have the skills, education or means to support themselves once they arrive in Canada. And many of those who do have qualifications quickly learn that they are not recognized in Canada, thus requiring them to go through a costly and time-consuming certification process to ensure that they meet Canadian standards.

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It is striking that Canada admits more refugees than the United States, a country with a vastly larger population. In fact, Canada overtook the U.S. in 2018, when this country resettled 28,000 refugees, compared to 23,000 in the U.S. Part of this no doubt reflects the Trump administrations crackdown on admitting refugees, but it also speaks to the Trudeau governments ambition to accept a large number of them.

It is not a mark of virtue for a country to admit more refugees and asylum seekers than it can realistically resettle and offer a decent life to. Rather, it smacks of the cynicism of progressive rhetoric on the one hand and a much bleaker reality on the other.

Canada is not the only country to have suffered as a result of its government believing that it is participating in some sort of Olympic Games for resettling more refugees than everyone else. Germany learned this the hard way, when Chancellor Angela Merkels government admitted hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing turmoil in Syrian.

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In 2015, almost 500,000 people applied for asylum and a further 750,000 applied in 2016. Merkel was hailed internationally as a champion of the refugee cause, but her decision sowed deep divisions in Germany and in part fuelled the rise of the far right.

Migrants in Germany remain heavily dependent on state support and they are disproportionately involved in violent crime, according to government data. This is not surprising, since only about half of the migrants who have come to Germany since 2013 are employed, according to a 2020 study from the Institute for Employment Research.

Likewise, Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus virtue signalling does no favours to the many refugees who arrive in Canada and find that without education, skills or income, life here is a new kind of hell and not what was promised in the brochures. Sure, being poor in Canada is probably better than being poor in Syria. But is this any basis for a rational refugee policy?

National Post

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Rupa Subramanya: Why are the Liberals doubling our refugee intake when so many of them end up on the streets? - National Post

South Australian Liberal MPs and voters have reacted angrily to National MPs trying to rewrite the Murray-Darling Basin Plan (MDBP) in Federal Parliament.

The MDBP was legislated in 2012, with bipartisan support across the Commonwealth and basin states, to provide more water for the environment.

Nationals senators on Wednesday failed in their attempt to effectively rewrite the plan by introducing amendments to federal water legislationaimed atdelivering less environmental waterand preventing any further Commonwealth buybacks ofwater rights from irrigators.

Caren Martin is a third-generation farmer and runs a 200-hectare irrigated almond orchard in South Australia's Riverland region, which relies on flows from the River Murray.

Ms Martin, who is also the chair of the South Australian Murray Irrigators, said the move in Parliament hadcaused anxiety among irrigators.

"It just leads us into a world of uncertainty and we have to constantly adjust to deal with that political uncertainty," Ms Martin said.

"I don't appreciate it.It just puts further angst into people's lives."

The move has also caused upset amongLiberal voters.

ABC News

Gio, who did not provide his last name, grew up in the New South Wales Riverina region but now lives in Glen Osmond.

He said he would no longer vote for the Liberal Party.

"I'm a lifetime Liberal voter," he said.

"I've always accepted that you've got to take the Natswith the Libs, but I'm sorry,I'm not voting for the Liberals anymore.

"I don't know who I'm voting forbecause I don't know if I can vote for Labor, but it's just so disheartening and frustrating that this Coalition now is very one sided.

"There's so much selfish ambition in what's going on and I'm despondent."

South Australia's Water Minister, Liberal MP David Speirs, reiterated the concerns of votersand said his party absolutely rejected the proposed changes.

"I think federally, if the Coalition doesn't have a tight hold of the Murray-Darling Basin issueand doesn't show that much-needed leadership South Australians in seats like Boothby and Mayo will be turned off the federal Coalition when it comes to federal election time," Mr Speirs said.

"As a government, we've got to show leadership, we've got to continue to ensure that critical environmental water flows into South Australia for our environment, but also for our irrigators and economic viability as well."

With a federal reshuffle expected imminently, South Australian MPs and farmers are warning of the risks ofchanging the water portfolio.

Sources have told the ABC that Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie has put her hand up for it, but Mr Speirs said that would not be inappropriate.

"Unfortunately Bridget McKenzie has particularly unusual views about the management of the South Australian reaches of the river," Mr Speirs said.

"Particularly her voodoo science around the Lower Lakes,I just find that out of step with the evidence that has been developed around the management of the Lower Lakes.

"She would flood them with seawater and that's a great concern."

Ms Martin said she wouldlike to see the portfolio stay with Senator McKenzie's colleague, Queensland Nationals MPKeith Pitt.

"He's outside the basin, he resides in Queensland so he doesn't come in with the 'protect-my-patch' sort of attitude that other ministers have had in the past," Ms Martin said.

"If they just keep their eye on the ball that we all want water security, we want this river to run and give good quality and reliable water supply to everybody, then we'll get there in the end."

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SA Liberals, locals frustrated by National Party bid to change Murray-Darling Basin Plan - ABC News

Speaker Anthony Rota in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 21, 2021. Mr. Rota called the court action an urgent matter and vowed to vigorously fight the government.

Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

The Liberal government is taking the House of Commons Speaker to court, in an unprecedented move to prevent the release of uncensored documents to members of Parliament that offer insight into the firing of two scientists from Canadas top infectious-disease laboratory.

The government said in a court filing that the disclosure of this information could not only jeopardize national security but also, possibly, Canadas international relations.

The Attorney-Generals office filed an application in Federal Court on Monday requesting that information demanded by Speaker Anthony Rota on behalf of the House of Commons stay secret.

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The legal challenge against a ruling of the House stunned opposition MPs, who were notified about the court application late Wednesday afternoon. An order of the House backed by a majority of MPs last Thursday called on the Public Health Agency to produce records it has been withholding from a Commons committee for months.

Mr. Rota called the court action an urgent matter and vowed to vigorously fight the government, saying House of Commons law clerk Philippe Dufresne will prepare a legal defence.

The Speakers Office will defend the rights of the House. That is something I take very seriously, Mr. Rota said. The legal system does not have any jurisdiction over the operations of the House. We are our own jurisdiction. That is something we will fight tooth and nail to protect and we will continue to do that.

Conservative House Leader Grard Deltell said he was taken aback that the Trudeau government would go to the federal court to challenge parliamentary privilege.

If the government does not respect the orders of the House of Commons, why should Canadians respect laws voted upon by the House of Commons? he said.

In the court filing, the government said the disclosure of the unredacted information would be injurious to international relations or national defence or national security.

Mr. Dufresne told MPs before a Commons committee Wednesday that to his knowledge the Canadian government has never before gone to court to try to elude an order of the House to produce documents.

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He said the House has exclusive authority when it comes to matters that fall under parliamentary privilege.

Justice Minister and Attorney-General David Lametti distanced himself from the court proceeding, saying officials in his department evoked a section of the Canada Evidence Act that is often used in national-security matters to keep sensitive information tightly under wraps.

As Attorney-General that decision has been delegated to department officials as is the normal course, so it is not going to be a decision that is partisan in any way, he said. I will never play politics with national security.

For months, opposition MPs have been seeking unredacted records from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), that explain why Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, were fired from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. The two scientists lost their security clearances, and the RCMP was called into investigate, in July, 2019. They were dismissed in January.

More than 250 pages of records have been withheld in their entirety and hundreds of others have been partly censored before being provided to MPs. They also relate to the March, 2019 transfer of deadly virus samples to the Wuhan Institute of Virology that was overseen by Dr. Qiu.

On Monday, PHAC President Iain Stewart was called before the Commons and admonished by the Speaker for his repeated refusal to provide the requested records to MPs on the special committee on Canada-China relations, including information on the transfer of Ebola and Henipah viruses to the Wuhan facility.

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MPs had put in safeguards that would require the Commons law clerk to review the documents and redact information that could harm national security or a criminal investigation before making them public.

However, Mr. Stewart notified the Attorney-Generals office on Sunday night that sensitive or potentially injurious information could be disclosed if he obeyed the order of the House of Commons.

Former House of Commons law clerk Rob Walsh said the Federal Court should deny the Trudeau governments request.

If the court is cognizant of parliamentary privilege, which is not always the case then the governments application wont succeed, he said. This is House business; its not the courts place to interfere.

He said the government may try to argue that there is a committee created by statute the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) which has clearance to read confidential documents. NSICOP, however, is not a committee of Parliament and is under the control of the Prime Ministers Office.

The answer back to that of course is that statutory committees do not take priority over the rights of the House.

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Mr. Rota was expected to rule on a motion on Wednesday to instruct the Commons sergeant-at-arms to search PHAC offices and seize unredacted documents.

However, the Speaker told MPs that he needed more time to provide a thoughtful ruling as the House adjourned for the summer break. If an election is called before Parliament resumes sitting on Sept. 20, Mr. Rota said it would be up to the next Speaker to decide whether to proceed with the ruling.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Question Period Wednesday that he was willing to work with opposition parties to find a compromise. On Monday, Government House Leader Pablo Rodriguez said the government was prepared to allow the Commons law clerk to examine hundreds of censored documents under oversight from national-security officials.

Mr. Rodriguez also suggested MPs could also use a process followed in 2010, when the Harper government allowed a group of MPs and a panel of arbiters to determine what information could be made available to the Commons about the Canadian militarys transfer of Taliban prisoners.

The government previously said it would only turn over unredacted documents to NSICOP, which does not report to the House. Mr. Trudeau has the power to prevent the committee from releasing information to the public.

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Liberals take House Speaker to court to block release of unredacted records about fired scientists - The Globe and Mail

The Canada Recovery Benefit starts to wind down next month, with a reduction in benefits a first step toward the COVID-19 pandemic income-support program vanishing completely by the fall.

The federal Liberals have yet to spell out what will happen in the long term, beyond promising a two-year consultation period on what permanent changes are needed to employment insurance. But economists say the income-support programs constructed on the fly over the past 15 months could be used to design fixes to many long-standing deficiencies in Canadas EI system.

The CRB, introduced last fall to support self-employed workers and others who did not qualify for regular EI payments, is better attuned to the needs of the modern economy, and does a better job in creating a path back to sustained full-time employment, those economists say.

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The way the CRB is designed, its very good, says Stphanie Lluis, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo.

In a recent study published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy, Prof. Lluis and her two co-authors, IRPP research director Colin Busby and University of Michigan Ann Arbor professor Brian P. McCall, concluded that the current structure of EI which claws back 50 per cent of earnings from a job starting with the very first dollar of wages provides little incentive for claimants to take part-time or casual work while still receiving benefits.

A better structure, they say, is one that allows claimants to earn some wages below a threshold without any reduction in benefits, and only then introduces a clawback at higher levels, but still allows individuals to add to their income through working.

In real life, the federal government has done just that with the CRB, which takes a much different approach than the EI system. Under EI, claimants lose 50 cents for every dollar they earn; once their earnings equal 90 per cent of their benefit, the clawback increases to 100 per cent. Every extra dollar of earnings is simply transferred to the government, eliminating any economic incentive for further work.

Pilot projects from 2005 to 2012 exempted some earnings, but then reduced benefits dollar for dollar beyond that point. That approach encouraged claimants to work, but only up to the point the clawback kicked in.

The CRB, designed on the fly during the pandemic, works much differently and looks a lot like the system that Prof. Lluis and her colleagues recommend. Under the CRBs rules, claimants can earn up to $38,000 in a tax year before benefits are reduced at all. At that point, theres a 50-per-cent clawback, the same rate as the one for EI claimants. But CRB recipients, that rate does not rise to 100 per cent, meaning there is still an economic incentive to continue working while receiving benefits.

The IRPP study suggests a clawback rate of 40 per cent, but Prof. Lluis said there is nothing magic about that number. An optimal rate could be higher or lower, and would depend on further research, she said, adding that better data are also needed on how EI claimants respond to incentives to work while receiving benefits.

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The timing of the clawback is another way the CRB is better than EI, Prof. Lluis says. Under EI, the clawback is calculated on a weekly basis, discouraging recipients from accepting full-time work lasting a short time. Not so under the CRB: Clawback calculations are done on an annual basis. So, a worker offered a short-term contract has a much stronger economic incentive to accept a job offer under the CRBs rules.

The broader reach of the CRB is another advantage compared with EI, says David Macdonald, senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Part-time and self-employed workers are more easily able to qualify for benefits.

Another pandemic-spurred innovation worth keeping, he says, is the minimum payment levels established. Prepandemic rules for EI set benefits at 55 per cent of a recipients average insurable weekly earnings. The CRB pays a fixed weekly amount of $500, or $450 after a withholding tax is deducted. EI now has a $500 minimum, too, and recipients can be paid more if their insurable earnings are high enough.

A minimum weekly payment helps out lower-paid workers, particularly part-timers, Mr. Macdonald said. But Prof. Lluis and other economists have said those minimum payments could become a disincentive for claimants to return to low-paid work.

However, the government is moving to reduce CRB payments after July 17, with weekly amounts for new claims falling to $300. The CRB is scheduled to end in late September, although Ottawa has allowed for the extension of the program until as late at Nov. 20, if public-health considerations require it. And the government has extended income supports and other programs shortly before their expiry dates several times during the pandemic.

Maria Lily Shaw, an economist at the Montreal Economic Institute, said Ottawas decision during the pandemic to reduce the regional disparities in qualifying standards for EI benefits was a positive move, and should be made permanent. Ms. Shaw said a nationwide standard would make EI harder to access in the Atlantic provinces, and discourage seasonal workers from using it as a permanent source of income. You have to break the dependence thats been created, she said.

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But Ottawa did not make it harder for workers in areas of high unemployment to qualify; it made it easier for claimants elsewhere.

So far, the government has proposed just limited changes, most notably the extension to September, 2022, of the uniform national standard for qualifying for EI payments. That will make it easier for part-time workers, for instance, to access benefits.

Broader reforms will take much longer, with the Liberals saying they plan to conduct targeted consultations over two years to examine systemic gaps such as income support for self-employed and gig workers.

Any permanent change to the structure of EI will have to wait on the outcome of those consultations.

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As the Canada Recovery Benefit winds down, questions remain over Liberals' long term plan - The Globe and Mail

Pod Save America is actually one undeniably successful example of Democratic progressive messaging, but itlike most avowedly progressive mediais for self-identified politics junkies. Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting are for anyone with a TV. For much of their audiences, they are simply the news. In order to give voters the positive messages Democrats want them to receive, liberals would need to create a mass media of their own and stop outsourcing the job to the frequently hostile corporate media. The Democrats messaging problem is really a media problem.

Some political science professors summarized a recent research experiment in Politico Magazine earlier this month. Alexander Coppock, Donald P. Green, and Ethan Porter conducted a series of randomized experiments to test whether parties can win over new loyalists with ads that promoted a party rather than a particular candidate. What they found was that, with repeat exposure, people changed their partisan identification ever so slightly after seeing the ads, and that higher doses of party-promoting ads could influence peoples voting decisions and feelings about Donald Trump. Partisan identity is usually understood as a root cause of political behavior, the political scientists wrote. By moving it, we also appear to have moved real-world political decisions.

In the world of American political communications, ads promoting a party are a novelty. The researchers concluded that both parties could benefit from producing the kinds of ads we tested, and its true that neither party currently does this with conventional TV advertising. But while these political scientists framed their experiments as part of a novel ad strategy, what they were really doing was directly exposing people to particular political messages that had been designed to influence their political affinitiesand even their identities. There is already language to describe what that kind of messaging is. These political scientists independently invented party propaganda, exposed Americans to it, and discovered that it can be effective, especially with constant exposure. Conservatives dont need to learn to do this: Its how their movement sustains itself.

Amusingly, the top-shelf political ad professionals the political scientists hired to make the ads were flummoxed by the request, because no one had ever before asked them to create messaging designed to promote the Democratic Party or to convince people to associate themselves with it. Despite how familiar American liberals are with the power of propaganda when yielded by the right, it has seemingly never occurred to the most powerful of them to do any propagandizing on behalf of their own causes and party!

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Why Liberals Ought to Invest in Propaganda - The New Republic