It’s tempting to turn Canada’s latest refugee debate into a morality play.

Or to play politics with it. Or do nothing — and allow more migrants to reach our shores on dilapidated boats, and one day wash ashore as drowning victims when a ship capsizes.

Either way, the rising tide of refugees sailing across the Pacific won’t turn back by itself. No matter how much refugee advocates pretend there isn’t a problem — or that it’s a miniscule and manageable problem — doing nothing is an invitation to human smugglers to profit from our policy paralysis.

Just ask the Australians, who have watched human smuggling operations ramp up to more than 100 boats so far this year.

It’s also an invitation to Conservatives to profit from a politically loaded situation. The government’s new bill to target human smugglers is a sleeper issue in Parliament, with the potential to inflame emotions.

The Australians have seen refugee issues explode onto the campaign trail and turn the tide of election battles.

Vic Toews gave us a taste of the political stakes last summer. As minister of public safety, he preyed on public fears by braying about Tamil “terrorists” aboard a freighter towed into a B.C. port. He disingenuously conflated human smugglers and terrorists. No evidence has turned up of terrorists so far.

But the damage was done. Or perhaps public opinion was already predisposed to turn thumbs down on the boat people. Within weeks, an Angus Reid poll showed a majority of Canadians wanted to turn them all back.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s latest response is provocative, but deserves a hearing. His proposed legislation takes aim at all mass arrivals — not just boat people but the airplane people who sometimes make up the majority of passengers on a flight (as when thousands of Roma were being shipped over to Canada on wide body jets last year).

Among its provisions: any boat people who go back to their country of origin within five years would see their refugee claims disqualified. Why would anyone return to a dangerous homeland? Often, the pretext is to visit dying parents; sometimes, it’s a wedding. Either way, it doesn’t add up — unless the claimant isn’t really fleeing persecution, but escaping poverty. A government sample provided by Kenney’s office — admittedly small — of 31 case files of Sri Lankan Canadians showed that 22 of them had travelled back to their birthplace after gaining refugee status here.

Canadians have every right to ask why hundreds of Tamils are suddenly attempting dangerous sea voyages to Canada 18 months after the end of conflict in Sri Lanka, when there was no such flotilla coming our way during the preceding 28 years of civil war. United Nations figures show 2,300 to 5,000 Tamil refugees are returning to Sri Lanka this year from camps in India. The UN High Commission for Refugees is predicting another 10,000 will return to Sri Lanka next year.

A growing concern for the UNHCR: human smuggling in reverse. The agency frets that impatient Tamil refugees are trying to jump the queue back to Sri Lanka by undertaking risky journeys by boat.

Kenney’s bill takes a sledgehammer approach to a complicated problem. But his opening gambit should kick off a conversation about how Canada can manage its refugee system more nimbly than before. The traditional hands-off approach has made Canada a beacon — and a pushover — for human smugglers and their paying customers.

Kenney says the “price point” for gaining refugee status in Canada is $50,000 because the odds of success here are so high. By contrast, a berth on a boat bound for Australia is considered so risky that it commands a mere $8,000.

Canadian policy-makers, and the refugee advocates who are clamouring against Kenney’s bill, have a choice. They can close their eyes to the perils of human smuggling — which chokes the system — and wait until an unsafe boat sinks en route to Canada, drowning several hundred passengers. Or they can recognize that more of it will come our way as long as we look the other way — witness the 250 Tamils who were arrested last month at a coastal staging point in Thailand, awaiting sea passage to Canada.

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The Conservative bill is no panacea. It singles out boat people for harsher treatment than others who come individually. But Canada needs a deterrent strategy. Whether you agree with Kenney or not, doing nothing and saying nothing is no strategy.

Martin Regg Cohn writes Tuesday. mcohn@thestar.ca, twitter.com/reggcohn, facebook.com/reggcohn. Click here to view his photos from assignments overseas.

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