Harper gets it wrong, again

Apologies for the blogging hiatus of late. I’ve just been swamped at the place they pay me to write, and I’m also concerned that blogging might cause heart attacks.

I did want to briefly pop my head up though to address these comments from Deceivin’ Stephen:

"I know the Liberal party wants to go back to what they consider the good old days, the good old days where backlogs just kept getting longer, where one needed special access to government members, where, frankly, they gave priority to strippers in terms of immigration policy," said Harper, referring to a 2004 controversy over former Liberal immigration minister Judy Sgro's decision to award a visa to a Romanian exotic dancer.

Little problem there Steve. The backlog has actually gotten much larger under the Conservative watch, because you’re not appointing enough adjudicators. Must be having trouble finding enough Conservative partisans to fill the roles.

Canada's backlog of refugee claims is soaring to record numbers due to the government's failure to appoint sufficient adjudicators, says the chairman of the Immigration and Refugee Board.

The backlog has ballooned along with the number of board vacancies since Prime Minister Stephen Harper took office in February 2006.

…In its recent report to Parliament, the board projects that the number of pending claims will soar to 62,300 this year. That's more than triple the line-up when Harper took office and well beyond the previous record of 52,325 pending claims in 2002.

…The board was taking an average of 11.7 months to process a refugee claim when the Harper government took office. But Goodman says the processing time is "significantly affected'' by the lack of adjudicators and is now approaching 16.5 months.

So if it was the good old days under the Liberals, backlog wise, then it must be double happy days now. And on the stripper issue, as I showed about a year ago that dog just won’t hunt.

Oh, and I agree with Telegdi. It’s a horrible bill, and I wouldn’t vote for it either. As for a party that agrees it’s horrible and votes for it in first reading anyway, pledging to fix it in committee? Sounds like a nice plan. But I agree with Dan. I’d say those words could come back to haunt them, but I’m kind of numb to it by now.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers