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National Post
20-07-2025
- Politics
- National Post
Letters: Throw Hockey Canada in the penalty box
Article content Next, the article only touched indirectly on the fact that an estimated 30,000 Canadians voluntarily joined the U.S. Army to fight in Vietnam. Sure, some were just looking for excitement, but most Canadian Vietnam vets I've met believed they had to help stop the spread of communism. Article content One such Canadian returned and joined the Canadian Forces and passed on valuable lessons about the warrior profession. He was my Course Officer in training and was highly respected. Another was the son of Gen. Jacques Dextraze, Canada's Chief of the Defence Staff from 1972 to 1975. Richard Paul Dextraze, who volunteered for the U.S. Marines and was killed in action in Vietnam, was the posthumous recipient of the Gold Star, the Silver Star Medal and the Purple Heart. Article content Did the draft dodgers affect Canada? I am sure they did. They were generally left-leaning and many stayed in Canada and took jobs in education and local government — thus infecting a generation of impressionable Canadians. Although I had a draft-dodger teacher in high school whom I liked, I certainly did not agree with his politics. Article content Article content I've asked this question of many Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of this great country of Canada. To quote the '80s pop band The Clash: 'Should I stay or should I go now? If I go, there will be trouble. And if I stay, it will be double …' Article content Many Canadians and all of its Jews have been put into the situation of making the difficult decision precisely for the reasons Michael Sachs outlined in his column. Article content Like many other Jewish Canadians, I, too, feel betrayed by the social contract breakdown. There has been an obvious lack of agency by law enforcement, policy-makers and legislators to shut down the hate. The result has been both an overt display of shameless pro-terror demonstrations and a malignant subversive antisemitic bias that is seeding deeply into the far corners of public and corporate services. I need not look further than the continued allowance of online incitement for violence against Israeli Defence Forces soldiers from Canada. Article content I lived in the U.S. for a brief time and left because I did not want my children growing up with what I found to be a self-centred 'me-first' American ideology. So I am not sure that the United States will offer the respite Mr. Sachs is after. Article content The problem we face is that the Marxist-rooted Liberal wokeism in Canada has teamed up with global jihadism, with the common goal of Jew hate. Losing to another Liberal term was a big step backward into the abyss. Article content Canada is one of the best versions of democracy I have known and with it comes the opportunity to speak up, get involved and fight the beast that threatens our safety and future. Hopefully we are not too late to reverse the rhetoric and noise of hate and stupidity. It is time for the silent majority to speak up and challenge the status quo. Once again we can become proud Canadians, but not without the will to find our voices. Please get involved in the political process, no matter how demoralizing it has become. Article content In our extreme leftist-dominated public school system, the social justice warriors have had the power to decide which students and staff are the true victims deserving of protection. Our public school system does not treat all students equally and promotes a tribal politics that is teaching our children that antisemitism can be justified and excused. Article content We have all been awakened from our slumber. The federal survey confirms what we already know and experience as Jews living in Canada today. The progressives in power are not concerned about antisemitism because of their illiberal, anti-western ideology. As long as they remain in charge of our public school system, the double standards will continue. Article content In 1970, a KGB agent named Yuri Bezmenov defected to the United States, eventually settling in Canada. In interviews and lectures, Bezmenov described the process of ideological subversion that the then-Soviet Union was conducting in the West, a process that takes many years to take root. The four stages of ideological subversion, according to Bezmenov, are demoralization, destabilization, crisis and normalization. Article content One of the key targets of ideological subversion is education. If we were to apply Bezmenov's four stages to education, we have seen demoralization taking root over the past several years. As Ari Blaff's article indicated, we are now at the destabilization stage and fast approaching crisis. The recent decision by the Ontario government to take over several boards of education is indicative of a system in crisis. Article content Our public school system long ago lost its way. Merit has been replaced by identity, teaching has given way to propagandizing and indoctrinating. Political correctness now determines curriculum decisions, and the purveyors of 'anti-racism' are enriching themselves on the public purse, sometimes with tragic results. Popular narratives have replaced historical facts. Moral clarity has been upended by moral relativism. Article content Jewish children are harassed and assaulted on their way to school. Administrators, fearing a backlash from students and the community, allow other students to drape themselves in keffiyehs, buying into the fiction that these are a 'cultural' symbol, rather than emblems of terrorism popularized by the late, unlamented Yasser Arafat. Article content Article content As a former teacher and teacher-educator, I am often asked by parents and grandparents about the advisability of sending their children and grandchildren to the local public school. My response is to seriously consider Jewish or private schools, if they can afford it. Students will receive a better education and will be safe, emotionally and physically, something that is increasingly rare in the public schools. Article content Article content Article content
Globe and Mail
05-06-2025
- General
- Globe and Mail
Is the U.S. still a ‘safe' country for refugees?
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, tens of thousands of American citizens sought, and gained, refuge in Canada. They weren't technically refugees – most applied for landed immigrant status – but what they were seeking was, in effect, a safe place to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War. The official policy of Canada's 'Department of Manpower and Immigration' was not to ask about applicants' military status; these were mostly young, educated, middle-upper-class men, after all – making them precisely the type of 'desirable' immigrant seen to offer benefits to Canada. There hasn't been anything close to that major influx of American 'refugees' to Canada since then, of course, but individuals from the U.S. never stopped trying. There was a small wave when George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq sent U.S. Army deserters such as Jeremy Hinzman fleeing to Canada. Since 2013, there have been 3,142 claims filed by asylum-seekers alleging persecution in the U.S., according to the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, including 102 filed in the first three months of 2025 alone (by comparison, 118 were filed in all of 2022). There was a significant spike in applications after Donald Trump was inaugurated for the first time, both from American asylum-seekers alleging persecution in the U.S. (869 in 2017) and from foreign nationals seeking refugee protection in Canada by way of the U.S. We can likely expect the same jump in applications now. Canada is now trying to make the process a little bit harder. This week, the Liberals tabled an omnibus bill that, among many other things, would render ineligible for asylum those who have been in Canada for more than a year (which addresses the spike in applications from international students who filed refugee claims after the government changed student visa rules in 2024), and would prohibit those who entered Canada via an irregular border crossing to file for refugee protection after 14 days. These are necessary changes that may help to bring Canada's current four-year-backlog for refugee hearings down to manageable levels. But some people will still try. Ottawa's proposed immigration reforms will restrict asylum seekers access to hearings Opinion: The tightening of Canada's asylum laws was an inevitability There are two types of would-be U.S. refugees. The first are American citizens like the draft dodgers of the 1960s and 1970s, the war resisters of the early aughts, and the anti-Trumpists of 2017 onward. Earlier this week, The Globe and Mail reported the story of Hannah Kreager, a trans woman from Arizona, who is seeking asylum in Canada because of alleged gender-identity-based persecution in the U.S; in March, CBC News reported that a family from Illinois had made a similar claim. These individuals cite Mr. Trump's edict on the U.S. government's official recognition of only two genders, among others, as evidence of the harms they face, but they will likely have a tough time proving their persecution rises to the level of 'serious harm,' particularly when there are regions of the United States that are far more inclusive to trans individuals than others. The other type of refugees from the U.S. are foreign nationals seeking asylum in Canada. They might have a much better shot at staying in the country if they challenge the legitimacy of the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA). The Supreme Court of Canada already heard a case challenging the STCA on constitutional grounds in 2023, and it essentially declared that the process of sending refugees back to the U.S., which is based on the requirement that they apply for asylum in the first safe country they arrive in, does not breach the right to life, liberty and security of the person under section 7 of the Charter. The SCC wrote that any violations because of deportation would have to be a 'foreseeable consequence of Canada's actions' and that even though returnees face a risk of detention, there are 'mechanisms that create opportunities for release and provide for review by administrative decision makers and courts.' 'In my view,' Justice Nicholas Kasirer said, writing for the court, 'the record does not support the conclusion that the American detention regime is fundamentally unfair.' But now, those without legal status in the U.S. are being picked up off the streets, thrown into detention centres and, in many cases, deported to third countries without a hearing. The Trump administration is doing that in defiance of court orders, as in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and resisting even the U.S. Supreme Court, which said that the government must "facilitate" the return of those deported in error. This matters for Canada because of the principle of non-refoulement under international law, which holds that refugees should not forcibly be returned to countries where they are likely to face cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. It used to be hard to argue that migrants sent back under the STCA would face that, but the case seems much easier to make now. Canada should prepare for another challenge to the STCA – and possibly, a different result.
