Of course, the headline is a little misleading as it says nothing about the 15,000 refugees being admitted in the eight weeks after Christmas.The government will prioritize complete families, women at risk, and members of the LGBT community. Single men will only be allowed to come to Canada if they identify as LGBT or are accompanying their parents as part of a family unit.Ooh, there's some tough love. But wait, Coach Justin has called a double-reverse. The priority categories do not apply to the suddenly split-off group of 10,000 'privately sponsored' refugees.
"Privately sponsored" single men (and I predict an inexplicably sharp rise in the number of self declared gay Muslim men) will still be allowed to come to Canada like any other refugee... which renders the proviso above totally moot (and, incidentally, intentionally deceptive).
The one thing this proviso seems to do is shift responsibility for all the single men onto their private sponsors. I guess that if one of these guys blows himself up on the steps of Parliament, you will have to bring civil suit against the United Church and all the other private sponsors. Who says Pierre-lite doesn't have a certain animal cunning?
I guess that particular obfuscation will be enough of a climbdown to appease the media and the average low-information voter.
What we do know now is that 10,000 refugees will arrive between December 1 and Christmas. Given civil service 8 hour days (even with no lunches or coffee breaks) that means 416 persons per day will have to pass security and medical screening. 15,000 won’t arrive in Canada until the end of February and will now be screened at the rate of 375 per day. Of course, there's the outliers who have presumably been screened with the same magic wand that apparently don't count.
Officials said 102 Syrian refugees have arrived since Nov. 4, which is when they started the clock on the commitment. The 3,089 resettled between July 2013 and Nov. 3 did not count toward the total.Fwiw, meeting the pre-Christmas deadline means clearing a refugee every 1.15 minutes. On the end of February deadline that's been stretched out to 1.28 minutes.
Feeling safer yet? Just don't turn on your tv.
