The photos of Alan Kurdi published earlier this month — his limp body washed up on the beach after he drowned while he and his family were trying to get to Greece — triggered massive public outrage and thrust the debate over Canada’s immigration policy into the spotlight.

With the humanitarian refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe getting worse by the day, all three mainstream parties are only too aware of how important their response to such matters is to Canadian voters.

While Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has been struggling against criticism from all sides, both the Liberals and New Democrats have been putting pressure on Harper and his government to do more.

Early in the campaign, Harper announced Canada would welcome 10,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees from “persecuted ethnic and religious minorities in the region” to Canada over the next four years, adding to the 10,000 Syrian refugees the government previously said it would accept over the next three years. Ottawa has also announced an emergency relief fund for Syria matching Canadian donations up to $100 million.

But will this be enough to win voters? And what do the three parties have planned for immigration policy overall?

The Conservative party plans to stay the course, making sure the sweeping changes it made to the immigration and refugee system since 2007 continue to run smoothly and efficiently.

“I believe the focus has to be on the successful implementation such as the new Express Entry system, which is the mainstay of new economic immigration to Canada now,” says Jason Kenney, the minister of Defence and Multiculturalism and the former minister of Immigration who proudly defends his government’s record on the file.

The express entry program allows potential employers and provinces to pick candidates from a pool of people who have applied to come to Canada.

“More broadly, we need to make sure our efforts to crack down on illegal immigration, smuggling, fake asylum claims, crooked immigration consultants, fraudulent immigration marriages . . . are properly enforced,” he said.

Meanwhile, the NDP and Liberals plan to announce policy initiatives in immigration in the weeks to come. But front and centre for both leaders is their response to the Syrian refugee crisis, with both trying to win votes with more expansive quotas for Syrian refugees. Both parties say they envision a kinder, gentler system that welcomes newcomers without the red tape and regulations.

No one has more to lose than the Conservatives if the party fails to capture the immigrant vote. Last time around, according to an Ispos exit poll, 42 per cent of immigrants to Canada voted Conservative. The party won 43 per cent of the vote of immigrants who have been in the country for more than a decade. In that same poll, only 37 per cent of people born in Canada voted for the Conservatives.

So the party is hitting hard, championing the changes to the immigration system and calling for a continued vigilance. It’s not just refugee policy that’s a point of contention. Immigration policy overall has been controversial since the Conservative Party took power.

For the New Democrats, “the file is incredibly important for a number of reasons,” says Andrew Cash, NDP MP and the party’s multiculturalism critic.

From lengthy processing times for family reunification applications to cuts in interim health care for refugees to the new Citizenship Act, Cash says there is a real sense of discontent in the minds of many Canadians about the changes the Conservatives have brought in.

Immigration is also very much tied to the country’s economic picture in Cash’s mind. But he sees it slightly differently from Kenney. He sees a less than rosy economy with newcomers and immigrants across the country as well as those that live in his riding of Davenport experiencing income inequality; precarious jobs; a lack of child care.

“For a party that for a decade has courted the immigrant vote they have engendered so much mistrust and anger in many of those communities,” says Cash. “I think the broad feeing of so many Canadians is that this government is past its due date and that’s felt in immigrant communities to the same measure (or) potentially greater.”

Similarly, Liberals say immigration is critical to the future of the economic future of the country.

“We have an aging population,” says John McCallum, Liberal candidate for Markham-Thornhill and the party’s former immigration critic.

“We are in competition with Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries to attract qualified immigrants,” he said. “If we scowl at them and erect massive barriers and make their lives miserable by giving them inches of paperwork to fill out and fees and all sorts of hassles and harassment, they may go to the beaches of Australia.”

He, too, points to processing times in family reunification applications; the hoops people have to go through to even visit the country; the barriers of the citizenship act, the barriers to refugees receiving health care, the removal of time spent in Canada for students who are applying for permanent residence as just a few of the problems plaguing the immigration system.

And he hints these may all be changed. “We think partly to reflect our values in Canada’s multicultural society and partly to reflect Canada’s basic economic self-interest we should welcome newcomers.”

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Where the parties stand

Conservatives: The Conservatives are all about staying the course — with perhaps some small refinements along the way. Recent promises including trying to get the provincial governments to speed up processing of foreign credentials and increasing the number of loans to immigrants to upgrade their skills. Harper has pledged that his government would welcome 10,000 additional Syrian and Iraqi refugees — with an emphasis on religious minorities and those who are vulnerable over the next four years and create an emergency relief fund that would match Canadian donations up to $100 million for Syria.

NDP: The NDP want to repeal and rewrite parts of Bill C-24 — Strengthening the Citizenship Act — in particular the revocation and intent-to-reside clauses that are the subject a constitutional challenge. The party also wants to reduce the wait times in processing family reunification applications as well as increasing the number of Syrian refugees to Canada. NDP leader Thomas Mulcair has promised 10,000 Syrian refugees will be welcomed to Canada by the end of the year, with another 9,000 annually until 2019. And the party plans to make sure to reinstate health care for refugees.

Liberals: John McCallum, the Liberals’ former immigration critic, said reducing processing times for family reunification applications is high on the party’s list. That would mean more money and more resources to the department to cut wait times. As well the most egregious clauses of Bill C-24 would be rewritten. The Liberals would also increase the number of government supported refugees from Syria. Leader Justin Trudeau has said that he would welcome 25,000 refugees — many of whom would be government sponsored.

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