Tuesday, September 15, 2009

A visa issue that will not stop biting the PM in the rear end and an unmitigated communications disaster I still believe this!

While attending the summit of the Three Amigo's, Prime Minister Harper's position on the Mexican visa issue blew up in his face. It was his own fault. To paraphrase the explanation as to why visas are now necessary, he stated it was due to a loophole in Canadian refugee law that allowed people to make bogus refugee claims either inside or outside of Canada. He then went on to say that it is not the fault of the Mexican government or its people for this situation and then pledged his great friendship with the people of Mexico.

Now, if we translate his statement from Conservative political language into English or French, it would sound like this ... We screwed up because we didn't fix a loophole we didn't like so we have to impose the visas. It's not your fault, it's our fault, but you have to live with the visas. We have no idea how to fix the immigration claims system and don't know when we will have a solution available or if it will get past parliament. The non-political problem the Conservative government will have is making changes to the immigration claims criteria. Presently, that criteria is based on the 1985 Supreme Court ruling which grants the right to anyone who is in this country without citizenship the right to ask to be recognized as a refugee. As Supreme Court rulings are extremely difficult to overturn, Mr. Harper has taken the easy way out of his "imagined" problem of fraudulent refugee claims from Mexico and the Czech Republic by imposing visas to slow the claims process down. If he ever does manage to change the immigration claims process the way he wants, he is going to have one hell of a problem (the 1985 Supreme Court ruling) which is why he can give no timetable as to when the changes will take place or what those changes will be.

Moving on to Jason Kenny, the other side of this dog and pony show, paraphrasing from Mr. Kenny ... Mr. Kenny believed it was right of Mr. Harper to point out the problems with the current refugee system. He also believes that Mr. Harper should not be criticized by the media for bringing the problem to light. He also went on to say that it was basically the Supreme Court of Canada's fault for too many refugee claims. As he was saying this, he appeared to laugh. I don't know if this was because he realized how absurd his statement was as he said it or whether he gets nervous in from of the camera crew from the CBC. Either way, because of the laugh, it could be implied he was making fun of the Supreme Court of Canada or the fair immigration policy the court set up. Either way, he looks like a complete idiot. now I understand why the press secretary left a couple weeks ago and last week the head of strategic communications for the PMO, whose job it is to be the chief spin doctor, resigned. They got tired of dealing with the clowns.

Note to politicians: See what happens when you have no communications staff left?!.