Refugee programs in Canada have always been politicized, but more so in recent years, evidenced by discrepancies between programs for refugees from Gaza and Sudan and those from Ukraine.
Around the world, people are being forced to leave their homes in droves. We are seeing it happen in Gaza, as Israeli forces continue to wage war. And in Sudan, which has also been wracked by war. Then there are the people fleeing political or economic strife - like those living in Haiti, or Venezuela. Canada has various refugee programs designed to take in those seeking asylum from what's happening in their home countries. But the problem is, they weren't all created equal. In today's episode, Vinita talks to Christina Clark-Kazak, professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa. Clark-Kazak says Canada's refugee system has always been politicized - but never more so than now.
THIS IS AN UNEDITED, UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT
PROMO SWAP
Vinita Srivastava: Hi everyone. It's Vinita here to tell you about another podcast. I think you might like. Climate change affects everyone, but it doesn't affect everyone equally. Immigrants often bear a unique burden, but they're also leading the way with impactful solutions. And there's a new podcast series shining a light on all of it. From flooded basement apartments in New York city to Indigenous Mayan farming practices in Nebraska- Home, Interrupted brings you deeply reported stories from across the United States. The podcast is produced by Feet in 2 Worlds, a news outlet that pairs early career immigrant and racialized journalists with veteran media makers. Find Feet in 2 Worlds' Home, Interrupted wherever you listen to podcasts.
PULL QUOTE
Christina Clark-Kazak: For some people, we're rolling out the red carpet, there was even charter flight people from Ukraine to Canada. And then there's other groups of people who are facing very similar situations where we're effectively using all means possible to try to ensure that they will not come here. And I think that's where we, as a nation, need to think very carefully about what are some of the reasons why.
I think there's an inherent racism in some of these policies. I think there's an inherent prejudice against particular areas of the world. There's ideas about what people will contribute to Canada that are not necessarily founded on evidence. That's where I think that we need to have a more honest national conversation about this, because otherwise we do get away with this sort of idea that somehow we are welcoming.
INTRO
Vinita Srivastava: We've been witness to some horrific things in our news feeds lately. Around the world, multiple wars are being waged, with people needing to leave their homes to escape the violence. This of course includes Gaza. It also includes Sudan. In other parts of the world, people are being displaced by political and economic strife. Places like Haiti, Venezuela, and Afghanistan.
The Canadian government has responded to some of these global events with refugee programs to accept some displaced people. But there has been deep criticism of these programs because of the disparities between them. On an earlier episode, We highlighted the government's program for Ukraine, which to this date has issued nearly one million Ukrainians temporary visas. The government waived several requirements for applications from Ukrainians with no cap on the number of visas. Meanwhile, our government set aside only 1, 000 visas for Palestinians coming from Gaza. Recent programs designed for Sudan and several South American countries were also granted significantly fewer spots, with onerous requirements for their applications.
These programs come as there's been an increase in official refugee claims to Canada following the closure of Roxham Road, which was an unofficial border crossing between New York and Quebec. That closure was based on an amendment to the Safe Third Country Agreement between the U. S. and Canada.
According to today's guest, refugee policy in Canada has always been politicized and has become even more political in recent years. Christina Clark-Kazak is a professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. She is the past president of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, and she's quickly becoming a friend of the podcast.
Christina Clark-Kazak, thank you for speaking with me.
INTERVIEW
Christina Clark-Kazak: Thank you. It's wonderful to be here.
Vinita Srivastava: There have been a series of conflicts over the last couple of years, including the most recent conflict over the last six months in the Middle East, and that has potentially shifted the flow of refugees across the world. How would you say these recent conflicts have impacted the flow of refugees to Canada?
Christina Clark-Kazak: So the conflict in the Middle East has actually not impacted the flow to Canada because Gazans are basically trapped in a very small geographic area and are unable for the most part to be able to leave. However, we have seen major conflicts in other areas like Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, where you have mass displacement. Some of those individuals are gradually making their way to Canada, but most of them remain in those areas. So in the adjacent countries, or even sometimes within their countries of origin. So they're internally displaced within those boundaries.
Vinita Srivastava: We're talking about places that are so far away from Canada. So when we're talking about the flow of refugees to Canada, who are we talking about? What does that look like?
Christina Clark-Kazak: So this is a really good question and it does change over time. It's very difficult to get to Canada because geographically we're so removed from many of the areas where these events are taking place, but also because the Canadian government has a series of policies, which we call externalization policies, which make it very difficult for people to get on an airplane because there were carrier sanctions against transportation companies. People will need visas for the most part from refugee producing areas. For example, the Canadian government has recently reintroduced the visa for Mexican Citizens, and as you mentioned in the introduction, the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States. This agreement means that if you come up through the U. S. and you try to cross through a land border crossing, you will be sent back to the U. S. And so it's very difficult for people to get here, but people still do get here. So because of the closure of Roxham Road and the border with the U. S., we've seen in the last year an uptick in the number of asylum claims that are made at the airport.
Vinita Srivastava: This sounds so complex. Like if you're out there in the world and you're looking at Canada and you're thinking about coming here, can we briefly break down the different ways that refugees can enter into Canada? I know that you mentioned some, but if we just break it down a little bit.
Christina Clark-Kazak: Technically speaking, there were two major pathways into Canada. One is through making an inland refugee claim. So under Canadian law, but also under international law, once you're physically present in Canada, everyone has the right to make an asylum claim. Now, obviously not everyone gets asylum if they make that claim.
There's a process by which the Canadian government determines whether or not people can make that claim. But to get to Canada, because of our geography, it's very difficult to get here. So people generally have to get on a plane, and to get on a plane, generally speaking, they're going to need a visa. And so they have to convince the visa officer that they're not actually going to make an asylum claim. They have to be coming here as a visitor, as a student, etc. And then once they get here, then they file a refugee claim.
You basically cannot make a refugee claim if you've come up through the U. S. by a land crossing. Because of the Safe Third Country Agreement.
Vinita Srivastava: Right, that's what most recently changed.
Christina Clark-Kazak: Exactly. Yeah. In March 2023, the Canadian government changed that, for example, in the past, people would cross the Roxham Road, which was not an official port of entry. Now the Canadian government is saying you're not allowed to do that unless you can stay in the country for 14 days and subsequently make a claim.
But that means you have to evade the RCMP and other kinds of authorities to do that. So you're pushing people into a clandestine situation to Subsequently, make a refugee claim. And the only other way to get to Canada is by boat, and Canada has a policy called the designated, um, origin policy, which basically means that if you arrive by boat, you are going to be automatically detained. People will not then come in by boat.
It's very difficult to make an asylum claim, and this is why when people are displaced in Ethiopia or in Democratic Republic of Congo or in Gaza, they're either staying within their own country or they're generally going to a neighboring country where they're being provided protection.
The second way to get refugee protection in Canada is through what's called refugee resettlement. So this is where the Canadian government makes an arrangement with normally the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, where the UN will identify people where it is not safe for them to remain in that second country. So say you're a Congolese person who crosses the border into Uganda, but you're- you identify as a member of the LGBTQ plus community, uganda now has an anti gay law, and so you would not be safe, even though you've now are safe from the persecution you faced in DRC, you're not now safe in Uganda. And so the government would agree to resettle that person.
And so resettlement happens either through government assistance, so this is where the government of Canada or the government of Quebec agrees to accept the person and to provide for them for one year after they arrive in Canada. Or through private sponsorship where basically groups get together and they agree to sponsor someone to come to Canada and to help them for that 12 month period when they first arrive.
Vinita Srivastava: You said Government of Canada or Government of Quebec. Why are you using that distinction there?
Christina Clark-Kazak: For most refugee issues, it's the Government of Canada. But the Quebec government has a specific accord. An agreement with the government of Canada that allows them to select the refugees who are arriving in Quebec. And so because of that, it's the government of Quebec that actually provides the services once they arrive in Quebec. For all other provinces, it's the government of Canada.
Vinita Srivastava: I see. So basically, it's very, very hard to get to Canada as a, with somebody with a refugee claim. Folks who are looking to come to Canada need to have an actual legal pathway to come before they get on an airplane. And some of the programs that, that have been inviting folks and have received criticism, because the number that have been allotted, for example, to Sudanese, to Palestinians, to South Americans are much less than the comparison to the program that was introduced, for example, for Ukrainians. Maybe you can help us break down some of the discrepancies between these programs.
Christina Clark-Kazak: So these are very interesting programs because they're not traditional resettlement programs. Under these programs, the government is allowing people to come to Canada under a temporary humanitarian visa. So Ukrainians who arrived in Canada did not come here as resettled refugees. They came under a very specific visa. Which was an authorization to travel visa. It was open ended in the sense that people were given a work permit. Some of the normal requirements for a visa like biometrics were waived. There was no fee for the visa. And there was no cap. Over a million people applied. More than 900, 000 were accepted. Ultimately, only about 250, 000 actually arrived. But still, these are large numbers.
And especially when you compare it to Gaza, where Gaza, the Canadian government is allowing up to 1, 000 people. The second difference is that there has to be a family member here in Canada who is basically sponsoring that individual. This is simply to say for them to get a temporary visa to come to Canada, the family member has to say, I will pay for all of the expenses of this individual. And it's also much more difficult to obtain because they have to provide very specific documentation. Everyone over the age of 16 has to provide detailed work history, detailed travel history, detailed medical records, an indication of any surgeries they've had, these kinds of identity markers. When you compare it to the response to Ukraine, this is much more difficult and much more onerous for people, particularly when you're thinking about the context of Gaza, where people have been displaced from their homes. Hospitals have been bombed, civil records have been destroyed. It's very difficult to get that documentation even in the best of times, but especially in this kind of context of conflict.
Vinita Srivastava: When you talk about how the Canadian government waived biometrics, paperwork, visa fees, it would seem, I don't know, I hate to use the term fair, but it would seem fair if the Canadian government applied the same principles, the same rules to other places also in crisis. So, why do we have such different policies for different places? Is it impossible to have a blanket wide policy for refugees?
Christina Clark-Kazak: The reason there's a difference is basically because of politics, and because of the specific geopolitics of the particular conflict that we're talking about. With the Ukrainian response, there was cross party support. All the way from the Conservatives to the Greens and the NDPs, everyone was on the same page to say, we need to facilitate Ukrainians coming to Canada.
Why? Well, because Canada is one of the largest diaspora of Ukrainians in the world after Ukraine and Russia. And so you have a very strong inbuilt Ukrainian Canadian constituency who can then lobby their elected representatives, who then represent those views in Parliament.
I think the other thing too is that in the case of the Ukraine conflict, the Canadian government very clearly condemned the Russian attack from the very beginning. And so they took a very clear side, and so therefore it was "easier" to facilitate the movement of people into Canada. Whereas Israel and Hamas, you don't have the same constituency. You have tens of thousands of Palestinian Canadians, not hundreds of thousands. And I think that there also is, even within the Liberal Party of Canada, a split in terms of policy on Israel and on the Gaza war. And so you don't have the same kind of political will and impetus to move people out of that situation.
I agree with you that I think it is unfortunate that we aren't applying the same standards. When we're talking about giving visas, this is discretionary. Canada can decide, you know, from one day to the next, as they did with Mexico, to impose a visa or not to have a visa. And so I think that this is being used to justify very different approaches and responses to the same human condition, which is people trying to flee conflict.
Vinita Srivastava: Yeah, right. It's very hard to watch. This is, my government is acting for me, but how are they acting so unfairly? It sounds to me like what you're saying is constituents have some sway. And that is one of the ways that maybe can make a difference.
Christina Clark-Kazak: I definitely think there is political pressure that constituents can bring to bear on it. Especially because we're talking about people who are in another country, who are not citizens of Canada, right? So there's no direct access to an elective representative. So they need people here in Canada, the diaspora, to act on their behalf.
I think the other thing that's happened between Ukraine and Gaza is there has been a pulling to a more conservative approach to immigration policy writ large. Blaming of immigrants, for example, for housing issues, the recent crackdown on international students. So there's been a kind of shift towards a more conservative immigration policy. And also very relevant to this point is now the government is saying they're also going to limit the number of temporary residents. And as I mentioned, these programs for Ukraine, for Gaza, are temporary visas, they're visitor visas. So across the immigration spectrum, you have the government starting to kind of rein in. That's because average Canadians are saying to them, we're concerned about housing, we're concerned about health care. These are not necessarily true, but people are making a correlation between the number of immigrants and some of the housing and other issues that are happening in their community.
Vinita Srivastava: Yeah, I think maybe it is worth it for us to take a few minutes to just talk about that because I keep hearing that we're in for a backlash. You can see it right in the politics and in the, the rhetoric that's out there, but I'm also hearing it from like people I went to high school with, like just my neighbors. I'm not hearing it from folks that I think that I might be hearing this anti immigrant sentiment from. We have this idea of Canada as being a welcoming place for refugees. We have an obligation, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that everyone has the right to seek asylum from persecution. Do you also see that? Do you also feel like this is happening? Like there's a rising anti refugee sentiment?
Christina Clark-Kazak: Historically, there's always been ebbs and flows in terms of support for immigration. And not to go too far back in history, but we have to acknowledge that Canada is a settler state, that Canada was formed on the forcible displacement of Indigenous peoples, and through a very specific idea of what the state should look like, i. e. European migration that was populating the area. And since that time, there's this myth that Canada has always been welcoming. But it has not always been welcoming. And it's been very selective in who it decides to welcome at what particular times. And we've not always been welcoming to people fleeing persecution. We sent away Jewish refugees. We've sent away people arriving by boat. We've now closed the border with the U. S. So I think it is a bit of a myth to assume that Canada has always been welcoming. And it's also a myth to think that Canada is built on immigration, because, in fact, Indigenous peoples were here before the settlers arrived.
And so I think it's a story that we tell ourselves and that we feel good about, and I also think that when we think about welcoming refugees, the average Canadian is quite supportive of refugee resettlement. If you think about the private sponsorship of refugees, this is a citizen led effort, right? It's average people who are getting together and deciding to sponsor someone they don't even know to come to Canada. This is a very laudable thing. Or it's different if people are coming from areas where there may be some prejudice against that particular area or some reservations in terms of culture, and then people start to say, "Oh, well, you know, we don't have to welcome everyone."
And this is where I think that the problem lies, is for people who arrive here spontaneously. I think that there is less of a welcome to people who are fleeing persecution and just knocking at our door and coming here of their own volition. There definitely is a backlash against that, and there's definitely, I would say, a pushback against immigration levels writ large.
It's very easy to scapegoat immigrants. It's a pretty universal thing that when people start to feel insecure about their own jobs, their own access to medication, their own housing, then they're going to say, okay, we don't want strangers. We just want to close our borders. We're not allowing anyone else in.
Vinita Srivastava: Oh yeah. I guess when resources become tight as we're experiencing, like you mentioned housing and the price of food. We're also talking about, you know, the idea of like, picking and choosing, Like we, Canadians are comfortable, I think in general, you're saying, with the idea when we can select who we want to welcome, who we want to invite or " let in". But, the other idea is the idea of that refugee, the person who doesn't necessarily know that there's an environmental crisis, there's a war, there's homes have been attacked, They're on the run. They don't have a choice to pick and choose. They don't even necessarily have documents. We could stop for a minute because we're talking about immigrants coming to Canada as being different than refugees coming to Canada.
Christina Clark-Kazak: So immigration is the broad category of anyone who basically is moving from one country to another, right?
And in Canada, we basically have three programs. We have an economic stream. So those are people who are coming to Canada specifically for work or to invest. We have a family reunification stream. So those are people who are coming because of marriage or adoption or other family issues. And then the third stream is the humanitarian.
And as you mentioned, we shouldn't actually have too much discretion over the humanitarian, because people do have a right to seek asylum if they're facing persecution. But Canada has been really closing off the available opportunities for people to do that because they're afraid there's millions of people who are displaced.
And so I think a lot of people in this context of scarcity are feeling like we're all of a sudden going to be inundated with all these people claiming asylum. But the reality is the people who are welcoming and hosting large numbers of refugees are countries of the Global South. You know, they're Pakistan, they're Uganda, they're Columbia, Ecuador. We need to put this in perspective as a relatively wealthy country, as a country that has a lot of space, a lot of resources. And not everyone is going to choose to come to Canada. People are going to generally flee within the close proximity to where they can. Only, if it's not safe for them to be there, that they're going to then move on to another country.
Vinita Srivastava: The numbers might be seen as inflated. What you're hearing out there are the fear in terms of the numbers of people coming into Canada.
Christina Clark-Kazak: Yeah. So last year, 2023, there were about 120, 000 asylum claims in Canada. So that sounds like a lot, but you know, averaged out, it's, you know, about 10, 000 per month. I was in Uganda when we had 10, 000 people arriving per day from Democratic Republic of Congo. So, you know, the numbers are just not in the same realm of comparison.
And then when we talk about resettlement numbers, those are even smaller. Those are people who are screened overseas and who come to a very specific program of resettlement, you know, they've already had their housing taken care of, they've got programs in place so that they can integrate.
If we're talking about the costs or people being concerned, when refugee claimants come to Canada, they get a work permit. When refugees are resettled to Canada, they land as permanent residents. So they are allowed to work almost immediately upon their arrival in Canada. And many of those people are working in jobs that actually Canadians don't want to work in. And so they're contributing to the economy. They're also paying taxes. You know, even temporary refugee claimants who may eventually be sent back to their home country are paying taxes here, and are not actually eligible for a lot of the services that we as Canadians are eligible. If we're thinking about costs, you have to look at both sides of the ledger. You can't just assume that everyone coming here is just going to be ultimately a drain on the economy.
But there's also the humanitarian and the rights based argument. Canada has signed the Convention on the Rights of Refugees. There's no signatories, but it's now codified into conventional law. So basically there are certain norms. And the right to asylum is ingrained in many cultural and religious traditions.
Vinita Srivastava: Right. What you said before is that even though Canada has consistently presented this image of being a welcoming place for refugees, we actually have not been that. I mean, I remember the Trudeau government, I think in 2015, one of the first policies was related to welcoming the 25, 000 Syrian refugees in reaction to civil war there. And I remember just being so proud, to be honest, I feel happy seeing that we were part of something bigger. That's an image is what you're saying. But have we as a nation upheld our responsibility when it comes to refugee policies?
Christina Clark-Kazak: I think the private sponsorship of refugees is something that Canadians can be proud of, because for many years we were the only country. Now other countries are starting to, like, model similar programs on what we're doing. You know, they're average people who, out of the goodness of their hearts, are deciding to sponsor a stranger to come. So I think those are very good policies.
I think where we fall short, really, is on refugee claimants. And also on, as you've mentioned, these disproportionate kind of responses to international events that very quickly become politicized. For some people, we're rolling out the red carpet. There was even charter flight people from Ukraine to Canada. And then there's other groups of people who are facing very similar situations where we're effectively using all means possible to try to ensure that they will not come here.
And I think that's where we, as a nation, need to think very carefully about what are some of the reasons why. I think there's an inherent racism in some of these policies. I think there's an inherent prejudice against particular areas of the world. There's ideas about what people will contribute to Canada that are not necessarily founded on evidence. That's where I think that we need to have a more honest national conversation about this, because otherwise we do get away with this sort of idea that somehow we are welcoming.
Vinita Srivastava: I don't want to make you get too political, but I do want to ask a little bit about the current government in power, which is the Liberal government. You know, like I was talking about 2015 when this liberal government came into power, and it seemed like kind of lovely in a way in the refugee policy, but I feel like it's shifted in the last decade since they've been in power. And I'm wondering if that's correct, or?
Christina Clark-Kazak: Yeah, I do think that when the Liberals came into power, there was definitely a departure from what the Conservatives had done on immigration, generally speaking, but also on refugee policy, specifically. And that was very much encapsulated by their commitment to resettling, very quickly, 25, 000 refugees from Syria, and in fact, that being more, because there was also private sponsorship. So I think that they did start off with this very pro refugee kind of approach. And, in fact, they even changed the name of Citizenship and Immigration Canada to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, IRCC. So they inserted the word refugees into what used to be just Citizenship and Immigration Canada. And so I think that did signal, you know, an opening towards refugees.
But I think if we look now at the legacy, I think they've always been strong on refugee resettlement, particularly the private sponsorship of refugees. But I think that there's been a mixed record on refugee claimants. The fact that it was under the Liberals that the Safe Third Country Agreement was renegotiated with the United States. And don't forget that agreement has been in place for decades, so over Conservative as well as Liberal governments. And it was the Liberal government who actually tightened it up. Now, this was partially because there was pressure from the Conservatives as well as from the Quebec Premier. But there definitely is a sort of pulling towards a more Conservative approach to immigration.
And I think, as you mentioned earlier, there is a bit of a fear of upsetting what they call sort of an immigration consensus, right? So there's this myth that Canadians will only accept a certain amount of immigration, or that we're only compassionate up to a certain level, and that can be compassion fatigue if we allow too many people to come in, whether they be, you know, economic immigrants or refugees. But particularly with refugees, there's this idea that refugees, because they're humanitarian admission, that they're going to take away from the public purse.
And I think it's unfortunate that the Liberal government has started to repeat some of these discourse and myths. This idea that we just don't have the capacity anymore. We were full up. We don't have the space. And I think that this kind of discourse is very problematic. Both from a human rights perspective, but also from the empirical perspective. The Canadian economy depends on immigration. That's the model we have, whether you like it or not. The humanitarian admissions, like refugees and temporary visas, they're not coming in as economic migrants, but they are contributing to the Canadian economy. And so I think we have to think very carefully about what are the impacts these policies are going to have on Canada in the long term, both from a, you know, a compassionate rights based perspective, but also from the kind of practical perspective.
And the other thing also about the Liberal record is that you see that these new programs come with a lot of conditions and a lot of emphasis on family members, the so called anchor family member in Canada, providing the support which was not the case with Ukrainians.
Vinita Srivastava: Right. You know, just on a personal level, my family was an anchor for my family to move to Canada. And I can tell you, even though it seemed like we were living large, there were a lot of us in our house, like there were- like we were full up. And every time I think about that anchor family requirement, I think about that. The resources that you have as a family is already a new family to Canada and struggling financially, maybe on your own, then those resources just get so stretched.
Oh my goodness, I remember that feeling of my mom having to stretch the grocery budget. And I, I really think about that a lot right now. We're asking families in Canada who potentially are already struggling to do the work of what I think is, potentially a social service work.
Christina Clark-Kazak: I completely agree with you. It's a downloading of responsibility, basically from the government onto individual families. And, of course, if you're a family member here and your family is stuck in Gaza, you're going to do anything you can to get them out of, to bring them to safety, but then to then require you to foot the bill, both economically, but also in terms of mental health, in terms of all the settlement support that people need. The average person is not necessarily well equipped to deal with mental health issues or helping people navigate these very bureaucratic processes. It's a lot to ask family members, and I think that there is a downloading of responsibility.
And if we think about another category where there's a lot of responsibility taken on by private citizens- this is the private sponsorship of refugee program, which has been popular across the political spectrum. In fact, in the last election, the Conservatives, as part of their platform, were saying, we're going to get rid of all refugee programs, except private sponsorship. Why? Because basically Canada gets all the benefits. of refugees resettling here without having any of the costs, because they're all borne by private citizens. So you could say the same thing about the Gaza or the Sudanese program, where, you know, it's individual family members who basically are having to take all the financial risk and responsibility. And ultimately, it's Canada who's going to benefit, because we're talking about individuals, people who come here and make their lives, become part of communities and part of the economy. This idea that refugees are simply burdens really needs to be challenged because it's not the reality.
Vinita Srivastava: The idea of a private citizen sponsorship, I think what I'm hearing from you is that for Gazans, that's closed, because for Gazans, they need to have like the anchor family here.
Christina Clark-Kazak: Exactly, so the other thing about Gaza that's different is Palestinians have always had a different status under international law. And so I think this also creates another layer of discrimination. And so I think what we have here is a situation where, um, the Canadian state is using, you know, its own foreign policy interests and its own domestic interests to decide the fate of people in very similar situations, but in different geopolitical situations.
And this then means that there's a lot of inequities that get baked into these very specific programs, and we can see that even in the numbers, right? In the huge difference between the numbers of people who- and the conditions under which they're being allowed or not allowed to come to Canada.
Vinita Srivastava: And we know that Canada is not living up to its obligations, let's just say, under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, if that's a fair statement. But what changes or steps do you think are necessary to ensure that Canada does live up to its obligations?
Christina Clark-Kazak: I think the first thing would be abolishing the Safe Third Country Agreement, but I don't think that that's going to happen. I think politically and legally, the Safe Third Country is here to stay.
What I think that Canadians can do, though, is have a better knowledge and understanding of what's going on so that they're better able to try to advocate as much as they can within their own domestic constituencies. I also think though, practically, once people arrive here in Canada, it actually is the municipalities and the local government officials and local communities who are stepping up, right? I think private citizens can mobilize. We don't want to fill in the gaps so that the government doesn't take responsibility. But I think that the more we can show civic engagement on these issues, the more than the government realizes, actually Canadians do care, right?
Because I think otherwise, there is this discourse that Canadians are starting to get weary of having refugees here, there's starting to be a turn in this sort of immigration consensus. And if we can demonstrate that in fact, no, many people do care about immigration. We care about human beings. We care about people having the right to access protections in Canada. We need to better understand what's going on. And so we can challenge the government to say, why are there only a thousand who hypothetically could even come to Canada? And why is it that to date, not a single person has arrived here?
Vinita Srivastava: I think those are really good questions. And when you say we need to educate ourselves, you've educated all of us right now! So thank you for that. Thanks for taking the time to break down some of these issues for us. I really appreciate your time.
Christina Clark-Kazak: Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for having me back again.
OUTRO
Vinita Srivastava: That's it for this episode of Don't Call Me Resilient. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow us so you don't miss an episode.
Also, we love hearing from our listeners. You can reach the team at dcmr@theconversation.com You can also find us on Instagram @dontcallmeresilientpodcast.
Don't Call Me Resilient is a production of The Conversation. The series is produced and hosted by me, Vinita Srivastava. This episode is co produced by Latifa Abdin, and our associate producer, Ateqah Khaki. Krish Dineshkumar does our sound design and mixing. Our consulting producer is Jennifer Moroz. Lisa Varano is the managing editor of The Conversation Canada, and Scott White is the CEO. Zaki Ibrahim wrote and performed the music we use on the podcast. The track is Something in the Water.
PROMO
Thabo Leshilo: When Nelson Mandela stood in front of the Union buildings in Pretoria in May 1994, as South Africa's first democratically elected president, my country was brimming with optimism for its post apartheid future.
I was there and relieved at the prospects of an end to bloodshed. But 30 years on, the country is in a political and economic crisis. And many have been left questioning the choices of the past three decades.
I'm Thabo Leshilo, politics editor at The Conversation Africa. And in a three part podcast series for The Conversation Weekly, I'm exploring what happened to Nelson Mandela's South Africa. I've been talking to leading scholars who experienced the transition from apartheid and are researching his legacy and the work still left to do.
Listen to What Happened to Nelson Mandela's South Africa? on The Conversation Weekly. Find it wherever you get your podcasts or listen directly on theconversation.com.