By Stephen Vance, Editor
After hearing from the recently formed Meaford Refugee Welcome group, Meaford councillor Tony Bell said it simply, and he said it perfectly – it’s just the right thing to do.
We’ve all read the news reports, and we’ve seen more video than any of us cares to, and we all know that there is a massive world crisis taking place in the Middle East. War has been a fact of life in the region for decades, and in Syria civil war has met up with the international war on ‘terror’; caught in the crossfire are millions of innocent Syrians who are now homeless, and in essence, at least for the foreseeable future, nation-less.
Here in li’l ole Meaford, we might be far removed from the realities of years of conflict and war, but we know injustice when we see it, and we know that we can’t stand by and watch as millions of men, women, and children are cast aside and left to fend for themselves.
Here in Meaford, safely tucked away in peaceful Canada, we have space, we have resources, and we have people with huge hearts that can without doubt help provide a safe haven for a homeless, nation-less family.
My sense is that the majority of Canadians are very supportive of the government’s commitment to allow 25,000 Syrian refugees into the country, but I have heard from some folks who most certainly are against admitting any refugees into Canada, let alone Meaford.
We don’t have the infrastructure to take on any refugees, one reader wrote to me. Really? In the entire municipality we don’t have a living space for a family of up to six people? We don’t have water to spare? We don’t have food to share? You know where they don’t have the infrastructure to support these Syrians? In Syria. That’s why millions of them have fled their home country and their bombed roads, bridges, homes, schools, and hospitals.
We do not have doctors to adequately look after our current population. My own husband has had to look at Collingwood to find a physician, wrote the same reader. Talk about first-world problems. Sometimes we here in Canada have to hop in our cars, and drive on our paved roads some 20 or 25 minutes to get to the doctor, who operates out of a clean office, and not a tent hastily erected on the rubble of war. Syrian refugees are walking thousands of kilometres away from their war-torn homes because their choice was stay home and die, or flee and hope that help – and peace – can be found somewhere, anywhere. Certainly there is enough medical expertise in Meaford to absorb up to six new residents, refugee or otherwise.
Someone else suggested to me that if we allow refugees to come to Meaford, our crime rate will increase. Based on what? Could there be a criminal or two amongst the millions of Syrian refugees? Of course, but I would argue that there are no more criminals tromping around with the refugees than you would find in any population anywhere. Have we closed our municipal borders to any and all because there might be a criminal mind hoping to move here?
Perhaps the most asinine thing I have heard in recent weeks with regard to the potential for Syrian refugees coming to Meaford is this: Why should they (refugees) come here, get free medical care, a place to live, and get handout after handout, while my family is struggling?
Seriously folks, most of us don’t know struggle the way these poor refugees know struggle. Some people here complain when the local military base fires tanks and bombs during training exercises because the noise interrupts their backyard barbeque. The Syrian refugees have heard those bombs as they have split open their homes and schools. They have heard the gunfire as they scurry between alleyways trying to find a safe route to their already windowless apartments. They have scavenged for food after their local shops have closed down, and food availability dwindled. These refugees have struggled: most of us here in Canada have never struggled like these refugees have struggled.
Personally, I feel that only one question needs to be asked when considering whether we should be opening our arms, and our national home to Syrian refugees – what if it was my family on the run from a devastating war? What if my children were crying themselves to sleep at night from inside a small tent in the middle of an overcrowded refugee camp, hoping that tomorrow they might be able to have a little more food, or hoping that they might see their friends again, or their cousins, or their homeland?
I know that if I were in their shoes, I would hope that a country like Canada with its wealth of resources, its wealth of people and skills, and its wealth of peace would open its arms to me and my children so that we could try to pick up the pieces of our lives and start over.
After all, it’s just the right thing to do.
