Syrian refugees, African refugees, the complication of the election, and complication of the truth.

With the photograph of thee year old Alan Kurdi dead on a Turkish beach, Canada woke up to the scope of the Syrian refuges crisis. Me too. I woke up too. But, correction. Canada woke up to the scope of the European migration crisis with a particular focus on Syrians. These are people who are so desperate to escape their present lot that they are willing to put not only themselves but their children at risk. These are not just Syrians who may be most violently displaced but they are also Eritreans, Libyans, Egyptians, Moroccans, etc…

What we became aware of is that huge numbers of migrants are suddenly pouring into Europe at a rate that is new, unusual, and massive. There are always millions of people willing to migrate to Europe or Canada. Suddenly, there are millions actually getting into boats and walking across the continent.

The media and the electorate clamor for answers. What will Canada do? How will we contribute? How can we help?

The basic political positions are:

Conservatives: We have already committed to 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year but they must be vetted as we will not put our national security at risk. In addition, we stay in the fight against ISIS as they are at least part of the part of the cause.

NDP: We will airlift 10,000 Syrian refugees be the end of this year. We bring our troops home and withdraw from the fight. 

Liberal: We will bring 25,000 Syrian refugees within the next year. We withdraw from the front line fight and, instead, contribute to training our allies in the area (Iraq?) so that they are better equipped to win the fight.

Note that although the “migrant crisis” has many people from many cultures and countries of origin, because we are in an election and because of the terribleness of Alan Kurdi’s death, we are suddenly almost completely focused on Syria. None of our three parties seems too concerned with Libya. Sad because the Italian Coast Guard picks up thousands of Libyans some days. On other days, hundreds drown. 

Kim Campbell once said, “An election is no time to discuss serious issues.” She was right. Her point was that elections make everything “either/or.” The debate polarizes and simplifies and the nuance of reality is lost.

Either you vet all the potential refugees and eliminate any security risk or you don’t. “Either/or” is a ludicrous oversimplification of the problem. It is popular when one is trying to win elections but it’s not real. It wholly underestimates the complexity of reality.

Vetting, for instance, will not eliminate security risk. It will reduce the risk. The more time and money one spends, the more the risk is reduced. But, it will never eliminate risk. Risk will increase or decrease somewhat according to the time and money invested. And, with a few very simple precautions, most of the risk can be eliminated quickly (for instance, only bring whole families or only bring widowed women and orphaned children). This is a good application of the Pareto Principle – 80 % of the risk can be eliminated by 20 % of screening procedures. In other words, most risk can be eliminated very quickly and simply. Most. Not all. The point is that it's not "either/or."

And let’s not exaggerate our sacrifice. Whether we bring 10,000 refugees or 50,000 refugees there will be almost no difference to our standard of living. The population of Canada is about 35,000,000. We are a wealthy nation with lots to go around. 50,000 new people is a mere 0.14 percent of our population – around one tenth of one percent. In terms of cost, this is almost an irrelevant number. Consider that Germany is taking 800,000 people. One percent of her population.

The real question is not, "What can we do?" The real question is, "What are will willing to do?" 

How selfish are we? How much are we willing to give up? How much are we willing to share? How much risk are we willing to take? And, what are the future political consequences of our decision?

We can bring 50,000 Syrians to Canada in the coming month. We can do this. Do we want to do this?

What are we willing to do? Or, what do we want do to? Or, what is the right thing to do?

I do not, by the way, pretend to know the answer. I am much better at framing the question than I am at answering it because, frankly, I am not sure how I answer these questions. 

The bottom line is that we can do a lot. The real question is what we are willing to do. And, do our political leaders have it right? Do they properly appreciate what we want to do? I don’t think they do because I don’t think there anything like consensus in the Canadian electorate.