O O Ø O O O O
The KD Curtain
Thoughts on our foreign policy.
Like most Canadians, I love it when Canada makes American news. Unfortunately, the last few Yankee news reports have been a little less than endearing. Coverage of the softwood lumber debate is one example, and the tragic friendly fire incident is another. But the real doozie is the ongoing murmur concerning Canada's immigration policies, which just this past Sunday exploded into a full fledged roar on CBS’s 60 minutes.
The telling quote from this coverage is from one David Harris, the former chief of strategic planning for the terrifyingly mysterious Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS.
Canada has everything for the discriminating terrorist. It's a modern economy, so you can get money...channel it around the world, a vast migrant population so you can fit in.
To Mr. Harris, and now to 60 minutes and the American population, immigrant equals migrant. More galling were the accompanying visuals of ordinary dark-skinned Canadians on the street. These Indian-Canadians, Arab-Canadians, and quite often Canadian-Canadians are being held up in an implicitly racist light as examples of how our immigration policies are flawed and dangerous. Joe Bissett, the former director of the Immigration Service, has gone on record estimating that since September 11th, 2,500 of the 15,000 new refugees allowed to enter Canada have come from “terrorist countries, Algeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan.”
As if there could ever be such a beast as a terrorist nation-state. I’m sure the citizens of Algeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan are appreciative.
To top it off, our brilliant Deputy Prime Minister, John Manley, is reviewing Canada’s domestic security policy. This is the part where we put up smart borders, and align our border policies with American regulations. (I live about 200 meters from the Halifax container port where we have agreed to grant American inspectors access to incoming deliveries.) Americans are so secure, I’m sure they’ll teach us how it’s done. I hope it’s worth all the media hand-wringing about loss of sovereignty. (Moot.)
So far I’ve implied that everything being spoken and done about this is wrong. True that, but this wouldn’t be the pd.o if I didn’t offer the solution:
Canada doesn’t have a domestic security problem (Americans call it the Homeland). We have a foreign policy problem. Namely, we have foreign policy, where there should be none. The very same advice I gave to Mr. George W. applies to Canada as well. The women and men in Afghanistan and the peacekeepers in Bosnia and elsewhere should get their butts onto the first leaky Canadian tub headed home, before the Americans convince our intelligent and dignified leaders that we should participate in the invasion of Iraq.
As for our immigration policy, we totally throw open the gates: immigrants from every country and refugees from anywhere are all allowed in. “Welcome to Canada, no we don't need to see your I.D.” Those boatloads of Indonesian refugees trying to get in to Australia can set sail for BC instead.
When I’m King, there’s going to be so much freaking prosperity you won’t even remember what a social safety net is.
In case you’re worried about our social safety net straining to support all these newcomers, I’m perfectly willing to scale that back as well, to guarantee we get the legitimate immigrants, rather than those looking for a convenient and lucrative hideout. (Don’t even worry about it. When I’m King, there’s going to be so much freaking prosperity you won’t even remember what a safety net is.)
With a free and open border to the world, we can stop trying to turn our country into a police state. We won’t have to grant our apparatus the power to detain suspects indefinitely without charge, or restrict citizens’ abilities to openly protest. And we won’t ever have to suspend habeas corpus.
The Americans, of course, will be beside themselves. Let them try to turn our 5,500 km border into the northern equivalent of the Taco Curtain. They can be totally free to equip their travelling citizens with biometric smart cards, or force bank customers to pee in a cup before withdrawing medium quantities of cash. Where would you rather live? A free and open society, that leaves every other nation alone and doesn’t even require a seat in the U.N., or in the meddlesome, barricaded and reviled States of America?
My reasoning: Canada doesn’t work with only 30 million people. We’re geographically too large, so the economies fail us. My estimate is we need at least 80 million to be competitive, and self-sustaining. By self-sustaining, I mean being sufficiently diverse economically that it will matter less what America decides to do with our border. We can’t get to that population level with internal growth alone. (What a task!) So immigration is the answer.
I like the sound of that. 80 million people living in OpenCanada, with a correspondingly kick-ass high speed rail transit system to boot. And the best part? We accept refugees from the States, no questions asked.
Evan Spence
Tuesday, April 30, 2002
PD DXLV