The GoC seems to have lost the ability to even provide even the basic services of government. Why am I not surprised that they can't cope with emergencies.
So Afghanistan part 2. It seems that the Government of Canada doesn't understand what a humanitarian emergency is.
Perhaps it's impractical, but people at the Canadian Embassy should do a basic screening, put people on charter flights to Trenton, and do the biometrics and everything else there. Once processed, Trenton is a clearinghouse to move them onto their "permanent" destination. It's not going to be perfect, and the embassy staff will need a great deal of support to help them and set up a line for those who have to wait for space on this side of the Atlantic. But this seems a lot like another example of failing to learn from recent history.
In Canada an emergency is defined as something that may or may not happen over the course of the next 100 years and has no noticeable impacts in the present. For example; "climate emergency".
This report is timely as for all of the federal govt talk of Ukrainians arriving in JANUARY (before the war started), I've heard little and now nothing of any arriving via our fast track process. Very disappointing.
This is ridiculous! Surely there are some intelligent people in the government who can make decisions based on common sense. Incompetent bureaucracy is epidemic.
This will be another fiasco as have most of the previous ones. I have little faith in the GoC doing anything like this properly or in a timely fashion.
I guess the extra 30,000 civil servants we hired during the pandemic at above market rates and with gold plated benefits will take advantage of the fact that they're nearly impossible to fire and just take their sweet time to push the papers back and forth. Why is anyone surprised? Government incompetence is endemic -- See Afghanistan, Phoenix, DND procurement, Indigenous water, PPE, Hospital, LTC homes ...
One of our friends was trying to get her parents out of Ukraine to Canada. She said the Canadian processing office was only open from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM, which meant there was always a huge line-up before the office opened for the day and after it closed. That is not how an "emergency" office should work!
I don't know the background, but I'll hazard a few guesses. First is that there are a lot of procedures that exist to ensure that 'dangerous people' don't get into Canada and that we have some means to find people if they exceed their allowed stay (the mentioned biometrics). Whether those things work is irrelevant here; they exist as required steps. For an emergency program to work, someone with enough authority needs to understand the risks involved and waive or modify some of those processes to expedite entry.
I'm guessing that has not happened; that we are simply trying to do most of what we would normally do, faster. Which is not a scalable approach.
If I'm correct, someone on the political side needs to make a few calls, knowing they will wear any issues down the road. But, that is what leadership looks like.
This is all conjecture on my part, but years in organizations of different sizes, I've seen this play out many different times in urgent situations -- people tend to stick with existing protocols and just try to go faster when a different approach is called for.
How is it even possible to call this program an 'emergency' authorization problem? Can the people supposedly in charge not model their system on what Poland is doing on a daily basis and has been doing for more than a month? Canada is a joke when it comes to actually accomplishing something. Our Harpoon missiles are still in storage and we can't issue a visa - or provide an appointment to get one issued with any kind of dispatch - There are all kinds of consular officials from Ukraine in Poland - they moved there in the days before the war started - what the hell are they doing?
Eighteen comments so far and all are sour, except one from Joel Freeman who says "unhelpful sniping" and "spraying grumpiness" are far from the intellectual analysis one expects here. I agree with Joel.
A few years ago the Canadian Government acted quickly to bring in 35K Syrian refugees from refugee camps in Lebanon. It was handled professionally and quite quickly. Has our Government forgotten how to replicate it?
There should have been a team there on the ground helping these people. The federal bureaucracy is incompetent in every department. A good government would clean house.
The government's ineptitude here is tragic, and it's shocking that even after the debacle in Afghanistan the immigration machinery can't be prodded to go faster. We should be moving heaven and earth to help these people. BUT, why do we seem to think large numbers of Ukrainians will want to come here? European countries have (mostly) been extremely welcoming, and many refugees will want to stay close-ish to Ukraine in the hope that the war will be resolved within a reasonably short timescale (weeks? months? a year?), and where they can count on a supportive community of fellow refugees and neighbours who are eager to help. Without any pre-existing ties, like family or friends who can ease the transition, does fleeing to Canada make much sense?
The GoC seems to have lost the ability to even provide even the basic services of government. Why am I not surprised that they can't cope with emergencies.
sounds like we learned nothing from the Afghanistan debacle!
So Afghanistan part 2. It seems that the Government of Canada doesn't understand what a humanitarian emergency is.
Perhaps it's impractical, but people at the Canadian Embassy should do a basic screening, put people on charter flights to Trenton, and do the biometrics and everything else there. Once processed, Trenton is a clearinghouse to move them onto their "permanent" destination. It's not going to be perfect, and the embassy staff will need a great deal of support to help them and set up a line for those who have to wait for space on this side of the Atlantic. But this seems a lot like another example of failing to learn from recent history.
In Canada an emergency is defined as something that may or may not happen over the course of the next 100 years and has no noticeable impacts in the present. For example; "climate emergency".
This report is timely as for all of the federal govt talk of Ukrainians arriving in JANUARY (before the war started), I've heard little and now nothing of any arriving via our fast track process. Very disappointing.
This is ridiculous! Surely there are some intelligent people in the government who can make decisions based on common sense. Incompetent bureaucracy is epidemic.
This will be another fiasco as have most of the previous ones. I have little faith in the GoC doing anything like this properly or in a timely fashion.
I guess the extra 30,000 civil servants we hired during the pandemic at above market rates and with gold plated benefits will take advantage of the fact that they're nearly impossible to fire and just take their sweet time to push the papers back and forth. Why is anyone surprised? Government incompetence is endemic -- See Afghanistan, Phoenix, DND procurement, Indigenous water, PPE, Hospital, LTC homes ...
One of our friends was trying to get her parents out of Ukraine to Canada. She said the Canadian processing office was only open from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM, which meant there was always a huge line-up before the office opened for the day and after it closed. That is not how an "emergency" office should work!
I don't know the background, but I'll hazard a few guesses. First is that there are a lot of procedures that exist to ensure that 'dangerous people' don't get into Canada and that we have some means to find people if they exceed their allowed stay (the mentioned biometrics). Whether those things work is irrelevant here; they exist as required steps. For an emergency program to work, someone with enough authority needs to understand the risks involved and waive or modify some of those processes to expedite entry.
I'm guessing that has not happened; that we are simply trying to do most of what we would normally do, faster. Which is not a scalable approach.
If I'm correct, someone on the political side needs to make a few calls, knowing they will wear any issues down the road. But, that is what leadership looks like.
This is all conjecture on my part, but years in organizations of different sizes, I've seen this play out many different times in urgent situations -- people tend to stick with existing protocols and just try to go faster when a different approach is called for.
How is it even possible to call this program an 'emergency' authorization problem? Can the people supposedly in charge not model their system on what Poland is doing on a daily basis and has been doing for more than a month? Canada is a joke when it comes to actually accomplishing something. Our Harpoon missiles are still in storage and we can't issue a visa - or provide an appointment to get one issued with any kind of dispatch - There are all kinds of consular officials from Ukraine in Poland - they moved there in the days before the war started - what the hell are they doing?
Eighteen comments so far and all are sour, except one from Joel Freeman who says "unhelpful sniping" and "spraying grumpiness" are far from the intellectual analysis one expects here. I agree with Joel.
A few years ago the Canadian Government acted quickly to bring in 35K Syrian refugees from refugee camps in Lebanon. It was handled professionally and quite quickly. Has our Government forgotten how to replicate it?
There should have been a team there on the ground helping these people. The federal bureaucracy is incompetent in every department. A good government would clean house.
Hope they’re not lined up behind the Afghan interpreters.
The government's ineptitude here is tragic, and it's shocking that even after the debacle in Afghanistan the immigration machinery can't be prodded to go faster. We should be moving heaven and earth to help these people. BUT, why do we seem to think large numbers of Ukrainians will want to come here? European countries have (mostly) been extremely welcoming, and many refugees will want to stay close-ish to Ukraine in the hope that the war will be resolved within a reasonably short timescale (weeks? months? a year?), and where they can count on a supportive community of fellow refugees and neighbours who are eager to help. Without any pre-existing ties, like family or friends who can ease the transition, does fleeing to Canada make much sense?