THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 2023. PAGE 5.
Other Views Am I just a Canadian or a human?
S
o, the Canada-U.S. agreement last week to shut down illegal immigration through Roxham Road in Quebec put me on the spot. Am I happy, as a Canadian, to see an end to people who are avoiding the rules to enter Canada, or am I unhappy as a human being to see people less fortunate than I am prevented from entering Canada? The use of this unregulated border crossing for refugees to enter Canada away from the regular immigration system has led to growing tension, particularly in Quebec, where the refugees are crossing. To keep that province’s authorities less unhappy, the federal government has been picking up these refugees and sending them to places like Niagara Falls. But with the busy summer season approaching, that city was not happy to see hotel rooms tied up for regular tourists with more money to spend. So, for all these people, a more regulated entry to Canada is appreciated. But as I watched the rules change, and unhappy immigrants turned back at the border, I also had to think of them as fellow human beings. What if, instead of being fortunate to have lived an entire lifetime in Canada, always at peace and with general prosperity, I had been born, as most of the aforementioned immigrants were, in a country with a corrupt government that made it hard for them to prosper. Then, too, there was the reality of the figures. Canada promised to allow 15,000 refugees to enter Canada, which sounds generous, but last year about 40,000 entered via the Roxham Road crossing alone. What happens to all those seeking a better life who are now stopped from entering Canada? I’m sure U.S. President Joe Biden must have suppressed a smile when he heard the Canadian
Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk pleas for help. He’s constantly criticized for the never-ending stream of people wading or swimming across the Rio Grande River to Texas and other U.S. states seeking a better life. His predecessor Donald Trump made a big deal about building a huge fence to stop the immigration. Meanwhile, we have labour shortages in Canada with some businesses having difficulty finding enough employees to keep running – even though we allowed 430,000 legal immigrants into Canada in 2022 and expect even more this year. At the same time, people can be on the waiting list for legal immigration for years before they are admitted. Refugees short-cut the system. But no matter how many people we admit, thousands more are waiting to enter. What happens to those who’d have used the Roxham Road entry point? Refugee spokespeople worry they will seek other, more dangerous ways of entering Canada. We’ve heard stories earlier about people freezing trying to cross from the U.S. at unregulated crossings. When I was young, in 1960, Canada had fewer than 18 million people. Way back in 1885, under pressure from the government of British Columbia, Canada passed a head tax to restrict Chinese immigration. Even white immigrants were discriminated against on the basis of their ethnic backgrounds: Anglo-Saxon
settlers from Britain and the U.S. were seen as the best fit, whereas Italians and Greeks were viewed as harder to assimilate and, therefore, less desirable. After large cohorts of mostly European immigrants came to Canada between 1903 and 1913, and a series of political upheavals and economic problems that followed World War I, such as the Winnipeg General Strike, a much more restrictive immigration policy was implemented. Under a revised Immigration Act in 1919, the government excluded certain groups from entering the country, including Communists, Mennonites, Doukhobors and other groups with particular religious practices, and those nationalities whose countries had fought against Canada during World War I, such as Austrians, Hungarians and Turks. In 1939, Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany aboard the MS St. Louis were denied entry into Canada on arbitrary grounds related to their Jewish backgrounds. After substantial consultation, the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau passed a new Immigration Act, which took effect in 1978. A radical break from the past, it established, for the first time in law, the main objectives of Canada’s immigration policy. These included the promotion of Canada’s demographic, economic, social and cultural goals, as well as the priorities of family reunion, diversity, and non-discrimination. The rules brought a huge change to Canada, with people of all races welcomed, as well as seeing our population doubled to 38.25 million today. Given the Canada of today, it’s no wonder so many people want to get in. So I’m still undecided whether I’m simply a Canadian or a member of the human race.
This week's Maitland Valley Camera Club comes to The Citizen from Wroxeterbased photographer Liz Allan, who was able to memorialize seeing her first robin of the spring just over a week ago, taking a break in one of her crab apple trees.
Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense
Times are changing
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ver the weekend, as I watched my twoand-a-half-year-old daughter try to swipe on our television screen and manipulate the goings-on via touch screen, I realized how much has changed from when I was a child to now. Tallulah has her own phone. Alright, not really, but I have rigged one of my old phones, maybe two generations back or so, to do the things she likes, such as watch Netflix, listen to Spotify, access pictures and videos of her and her family and set a timer (she loves watching the timer work its way down, don’t ask me why). So, she’s used to touching and swiping and bopping all over the phone doing whatever she wants. It then stands to reason that she thinks she can do this on all screens. So, when I paused one of her favourite shows on the television, a move with which she disagreed, she marched up to the screen and tried to move the time code bar at the bottom of the screen to get it moving again. It didn’t accomplish anything, of course, except peanut butter fingerprints on the television, but it certainly gave us a laugh. But it did get me thinking. She is growing up in a world in which she can watch anything she wants (though her beloved Peppa Pig is leaving Netflix today - March 31 - which is going to be a problem, both for her and for us) as many times as she wants, whenever she wants on any device she wants. That’s just something I don’t think I, at two-and-a-half years old, would have been able to fathom. To be able to watch your favourite episodes of your favourite show on a little television (for all intents and purposes) in your hands has to be mind-blowing. But the thing that really gets me when I think about the differences between her generation and my generation when it comes to this stuff is the level of access she has to - frankly - anything she wants at any time of day with relatively little effort. Think about it. She can, thanks to the internet and streaming services, pull up even the most obscure and hard-to-find videos or shows in a matter of seconds. As someone who, especially in my teen years, was interested in a lot of off-the-beaten-path stuff, whether it was movies, books or music, it’s amazing to think that Tallulah, and now Cooper, will have all of these things at their fingertips. Growing up in a Toronto suburb, I had to visit weird video stores, independent music stores and creepy bookstores that, more often than not, were in subterranean, split-level retail spaces in the less-visited corners of Toronto to find the things I wanted to see, read and listen to. I’d have to pay several hours’ of pay to buy an imported CD from an obscure band, not even sure I’d like it, or special order DVDs that would take weeks to arrive. Now, all of that stuff is available at the quick click of a button. And, for the most part, for free. There are subscription charges for some services like Netflix or Spotify, but on YouTube, you can find the most obscure, hardto-find performances from your favourite artists within seconds. When I was young, I used to get up early to have my breakfast and watch Bobby’s World before I went to school. You know why? Because that’s when it was on. That’s another thing she’ll never understand in the era of DVRs, YouTube, Netflix, Disney Plus, etc., the idea of something being on at a specific time on a specific channel. She’ll rarely have to wait for something to come on or lament that she’s missed something.
