Honesty On Refugees Is The Best Policy

Published 11/12/2024 · Updated 11/12/2024

So how did the City of Ottawa get in so much unnecessary trouble over refugees and their housing?

How do you do this? The late mayor Marion Dewar brought in 4,000 boat people into the community and residents stood steadfastly behind her to help. Not so this time.

So how did the city do it? By doing what it always does.

The municipal mandarins, who know better than the citizens of the best educated major city in Canada, decided what they wanted to do and then bent the consultation to fit their prescribed solution.

The city media department (Happy Town News) boiled and bubbled its brew of black public-relations magic trying to make it appear that the already-decided option was the one the public wanted … even when it overwhelmingly didn’t.

Dewar didn’t need HTN to help. She had an honest and good position. Boat people were being killed or displaced on the ocean in horribly unseaworthy and over-crowded vessels. Their plight was on the 6 p.m. television news every night.

So Dewar said Ottawans could not allow people to be in such a situation so Ottawans opened their doors and hearts to boat people because they felt for them and it was the right thing to do.

Refugees need help now and even more soon will need assistance on a scale we’ve never seen here before.

But how did the tall foreheads handle it? They came forward with a finished proposal that they orchestrated through public propaganda and just screwed it up. The city didn’t just screw up. It screwed up big time. Hundreds of people in Barrhaven and Kanata petitioned, protested and marched to stop the sprung structures.

Selling sprung structures in your neighbourhood is like trying to sell air-conditioning in Whitehorse in January.

And worse, the city considered all kinds of places to put the sprung structures. So everyone feared getting a big glorified tent next to their barbecue. That caused a lot of unnecessary uneasiness.

The right thing to do is called legitimacy oh mighty pols and staffers on Laurier Avenue. Legitimacy does not consist of coming up with the so-called solution then trying weedle this unsupported ‘solution’ down the throats of Ottawa. That is not legitimacy.

Legitimacy is Politics 101. If people think a law is not legitimate, they’ll break it. That’s how the world works. Good law? Good idea? They’ll back it.

The right way to deal with the refugee issue was the way Dewar did it. She spoke from the heart. We can’t let innocent people suffer, she said. So residents responded. She was honest, not manipulating. We need to help these people. How will we do it? Here’s some options we have. Does the public have better/ Then listen. Weigh the suggestions honestly. And make a decision the public can support.

Instead in the current example, the city came forth with its finished plan and said this is what we will do.

Well, we saw how that worked out. Not good.

What this city needs to learn is how to sell an idea. Helping refugees. Does it get anymore mom-and-apple-pie than that? Forget the gamesmanship. Tell the truth.

But count on the city to get it wrong. The city made the issue dubious sprung structures. Had they said we must find ways to house refugees and we need ideas fast, the public would have responded. Smart people in this city. And if the city got push back on temporary housing, maybe it was time to take another route. But the city tried to force these glorified tents down people’s throats. People don’t like that.

Dictate solutions enough times and you get a dictatorship. Or faux democracy. Democracy one day every four years.

Mayor Mark Sutcliffe needs the hearts and minds of Ottawans to open their doors to refugees. A catastrophe is approaching in the U.S. with the government likely forcing illegal immigrants out of the country. Ukraine could fall. The Middle East will be the Middle East.

Refugees will be turning their eyes to Canada and Ottawa to help them in a desperate situation. But the public is not onside. Kanata and Barrhaven want nothing to do with housing refugees given the mighty botching the city government did with this issue.

And perhaps as just desserts, Mark Sutcliffe has just alienated two of the areas where he got big support during the last election … Kanata and Barrhaven. What goes around, comes around. Maybe there’s justice after all.

Marion Dewar knew how to handle a refugee situation. Win the hearts and the minds will follow. Instead on this question, city hall has botched it.

Pols and staffers couldn’t capture the hearts on sprung structures so the minds went elsewhere.

City hall has failed desperate refugees.

So honesty is not just the right policy. It’s also the most effective.

Ken Gray