With that said, I'd actually agree that Quebec is a diversion. The real issue--and fatal flaw in CANZUK--is loss of immigration sovereignty.
I already posted this article about Nauru, but here it is again.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/a...u-australias-dumping-ground-for-refugees
here's another:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...hildren-in-australian-offshore-detention
For those of you too lazy to click a link, here are some highlights.
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In effect, people accused of no crime are warehoused in appalling conditions in arbitrary and indefinite detention. Dozens of countries, the United Nations, and rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have documented and condemned the illegal detention.
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The first Nauru experiment began in 2001, after the Tampa crisis, when a Norwegian freighter that had rescued more than 400 mainly Afghan Hazara refugees from their sinking vessel in international waters 140km north of Christmas Island was refused entry into Australian waters, in defiance of international law. With boats carrying asylum seekers arriving consistently – as they have on and off since the mid-1970s – and with immigration proving a divisive, possibly critical issue in a federal election campaign, the MV Tampa provided the conservative Coalition government with a catalyst for action. That was the establishment of “offshore detention” camps on Nauru and on Papua New Guinea, the so-called Pacific solution.
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The first Nauru regime ran until 2007. The camp was bedevilled by problems: overcrowded tents and a shortage of water were the most pressing. Slowly it was established that, overwhelmingly, those who had come by boat were not “queue jumpers” or criminals or terrorists (a claim regularly made by ministers, despite being refuted by the government’s own national security chief) but rather people fleeing genuine persecution and who were owed protection. Most were resettled, and mostly in Australia. The Nauru detention regime ended in farce, with Australia at one point paying for the massive bureaucracy of an entire incarceration centre housing just two Iraqi men, both of whom were found to be refugees and were resettled.
‘I want death’: Nauru files chronicle despair of asylum seeker children
Read more
Nauru’s second iteration as an isle of detention, instituted by a Labor government and carried on with unswerving determination by the current Liberal-National Coalition government, began in 2012. Again, an increase in the number of boats arriving – this time allied to concern about deaths at sea (not a rationale cited in 2001) – sparked a return to the former policy. Nauru and Manus, both of which had been mothballed, and condemned by the then immigration minister, Chris Evans, as “a cynical, costly and ultimately unsuccessful exercise”, were redeveloped at a cost of billions of dollars.
The problems are undiminished. But the second Nauru detention regime has been kept carefully hidden. Foreign journalists – save for a handful of selected reporters – are forbidden entry to the island. A media visa is a theoretical possibility – at the inflated price of $8,000 an application – but requests from the Guardian and other independent media organisations, even for the visa application form, are met with stony silence.
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The reports range from a guard allegedly grabbing a boy and threatening to kill him once he is living in the community to guards allegedly slapping children in the face. In September 2014 a teacher reported that a young classroom helper had requested a four-minute shower instead of a two-minute shower. “Her request has been accepted on condition of — favours. It is a male security person. She did not state if this has or hasn’t occurred. The security officer wants to view a boy or girl having a shower.”
Some reports contain distressing examples of behaviour by traumatised children. According to a report from September 2014, a girl had sewn her lips together. A guard saw her and began laughing at her. In July that year a child under the age of 10 undressed and invited a group of adults to insert their fingers into her —; in February 2015 a young girl gestured to her — and said a male asylum seeker “cut her from under”.
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If you want to make an Australian with a heart and a brain squirm, all you have to do is mention Nauru. But most Australians are as delightfully oblivious to everything--it's the source of their bluff charm--as most of the world are to Australia. If anyone paid attention, they'd be an international pariah.
Australia's illegal, human-rights-violating approach to refugee (non) settlement is obviously incompatible with Canada's, and ought to irritate every instinct we have about what it means for Canada to be a good and just country.
Being completely cynical, CANZUK could read as a play to sideload less humane immigration policies. I prefer to think its strident supporters aren't attempting an end run around our better instinct by appealing to freedom, and just haven't thought it through.
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