Are they excuses or facts that face Canadians?
I agree Canada has the land mass and space but is the infrastructure in place to accept the numbers you quoted?
What is the current vacancy rate of housing in Shardsville?
Are there enough classroom spots in the schools? Will they actually attend state run schools or prefer to be schooled outside of state run schools?
Last time I checked the Federal Govt doesn't build houses or rental homes.

I have no problem with how many privately sponsored refugees we receive.
The sticking point seems to be the number the Govt should take in separate from the privately sponsored ones.
The vacancy rate in my city for renters is around 2.5%. Will the owners of these properties give up these properties for nothing or expect the Provinces or Feds to pay the monthly rents. Granted some spots might have been vacant for several weeks/months but my suspicion is most owners won't give these properties up for free.
I understand we need to help these people but others have also got to step up to the plate. How do you feel about the response from the South American countries or the 5 richest Middle East countries who have admitted zero refugees?
Its not just the G7s responsibility its a world responsibility.

I'll ignore the lame excuses.

I'm not particularly bothered by the Gulf States. As a BBC article I posted explained, there are major demographic and political issues in the smaller states which is causing their reluctance. As far as Saudi goes, I think the fewer people that are subject to that atrocious regime the better.

No idea on South America countries. Plenty of their own internal problems, including poverty, and as far as I recall, they were not a part of the 'coalition of the willing' that ripped the region apart. If they can take refugees great, but their not taking any is not a further excuse for relatively richer Western nations not to act.

You talk about 'infrastructure problems'...have you seen how these people are living? In squalid camps or warehouses, and getting bread thrown at them. Lebanon has had enough of the Syrian exodus (which they have endured for three years while the West has been sweeping everything under the carpet) and is now allowing living conditions to deteriorate to the point that people risk their lives at sea. Only to be beaten by the Macedonians and Hungarians. It really is disgraceful.

I will also ignore your lame excuses. Come up with real solutions and how Canada can help out and we can continue.

That's what the government for, my only role is to say, "yes, do it" rather than "nah, can't afford, let em suffer like everyone else does".

So you will be voting for Justin then as he wants 25,000 refugees and $100 million to start off with then.
My role is to say lets help them out but lets be careful how we do it and not go into this blindly.

Almost as pathetic as Cameron's 20,000 over five years. Where's the anglo Angela Merkel?

Last time I checked both of these were EU leaders and don't represent Canada.
Mr Harper who is our democratically elected leader has given you his views on the current crisis as in your words that is what the Govt is for.
And before we get onto the well I didn't vote for him or only X% voted for him we can say that about all the current wannabe PMs
Now I don't exactly believe in opinion polls and the recent Alberta provincial election was proof of this.
On 4 September CBC reported the following
Poll Tracker: Tories drop to 3rd place, NDP's lead shrinks - Politics - CBC News

One leader is polling just above 36% so that leaves 64% tending to disagree with that leader, the other 2 are around the 30% mark.
Whoever gets in on 19 Oct will then decide how to deal with this crisis on that date but currently Harper is our leader and he is doing what he was elected to do and run this country.
BTW Im no Harper fanboy.

They are a load of bollocks. You can't possibly draw a conclusion that Canada is not is a position to do it's fair share based on those statements. As Shard says, they are just excuses and pretty thin ones that don't fool anyone.

You say that Canada, one of the richest countries in the world, doesn't have any spare money to take in any refugees, sorry, freeloaders. I have a question for you. How much did taking thousands of Vietnamese refugees cost Canada? I know you don't know otherwise you would keep quiet. So I will tell you.

The answer is $0. A big fat effing zero.

You can't hide behind an economic argument because there isn't one. If you are really set against taking refugees please have the courage to say, honestly, why.

P.S. It is impossible to take any post that suggests Jason Kenny as a source of facts seriously. It does give an idea where the bulk of the post comes from.

Some of those are very valid points, especially housing. Doesn't mean Canada can't help, and should help, but at the same time when you have people already here struggling to pay rent because it's eating up 50-60% of their income, I can see why people become frustrated.

More then one region of Canada have rental shortages as it is, bringing more people in without first taking care of that will benefit nobody and just create even more housing issues.

If one isn't a renter in Canada, it can be hard to understand how difficult and costly renting is and how hard it is to find in some city's, if a city or region can't currently support the population it has, why bring in more people until those issues are resolved?

Maybe pick regions that have a surplus of housing and lower population density and somehow keep people in those regions would work?

It's not hard to see why people become frustrated. Canada the government can afford to deal with refugees, but can the individual people of Canada who are already paying huge amounts of their income just for rent afford it?

Strange logic.

Canada has a GDP of 1.827 trillion dollars per year and growing and your saying that because we have some hard up and financially irresponsible people at the bottom of the system we can't afford to help more?

Sounds like the classic capitalism "notion of greed" to me.

Not all poor people are financially irresponsible or have debt.

No but, with the best respect in the world, most of the taxes to pay for it will come from the middle higher earners anyway.

The situation for people with low incomes and high rents is caused by political and economic structure. It has very little to do with a lack of money in Canada. Just look at the net worth of the Top 1000 richest people in Canada or the corporate profits.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/03...n_6894634.html

Canada is well resourced to help plenty of people (both refugees and it's own) but it has to start with the politicians who are elected by all driving the change. It's a big election coming.

I agree 110%. I did not mean it sound that way either so I apologise if it does.

When I said hard up and financially irresponsible people it is not meant to imply that both of those apply. There are many people who are hard up for numerous reasons and these can often be beyond their control.

No greed whatsoever, stupidity maybe or a false sense of economy! and no we cannot afford to help others when our own are in deep sshite

According to stats Canada everyone here is finacially irresponsible, we owe too much, borrow too much, leverage too much & the interest we pay on the national debt is $28 billion/yr. Doesnt work for such a small populated country, on top of which we dosh out #3 billion in foreign aid foreign iad

We don't all get a say in elections since not everyone living in Canada gets to vote.

I have no concern for the most part over refugees and would like Canada to help where Canada can, I can just see why others have reservations and concerns considering there are regions of Canada that can't handle the people who already reside in said regions, especially in regards to housing which the politicians could solve but choose not to.


I would not be opposed to a well planned out solution to bring refugees here but the government needs a viable plan in place before doing it.