Politicians fudge the truth. But Stephen Harper is in a league all his own. This marathon election campaign has only helped expose how he’s prone to twisting facts.

On the ban on the niqab, he repeatedly argued that those being sworn in as citizens “should not hide their identity.” But the identity of Zunera Ishaq was never in doubt. Nor was it ever going to be at the ceremony — she had said that she would show her face to officials prior to the public ceremony. This is what she did minutes before she took her oath of citizenship last week in Mississauga.

In the Sept. 28 televised leaders’ debate, Harper said: “We will be the first country in the world to effectively shut down coal-fired electricity, the biggest single source of emissions on the planet.”

This drew a sharp retort from Justin Trudeau:

“Mr. Harper, you do see the irony of standing here in Toronto and trying to tell people of Ontario that you supported and aided the closing down of the coal-fired plants here in Ontario! (Applause.) You and your government fought tooth-and-nail against the Ontario government … and now (you are) taking credit for it.”

Trudeau could’ve added that Harper had rejected a direct appeal for help from Dalton McGuinty. And today, Harper’s Conservative cousins at Queen’s Park continue to lambaste the government for its green energy initiatives.

In the Sept. 18 televised leaders’ debate, Harper accused the newly elected NDP government in Alberta of increasing the deficit — even though the Rachel Notley government was yet to introduce its first budget.

He also asserted that Notley’s 2 per cent increase in corporate taxes had already led to layoffs.

“Really? Isn’t it the drastic drop in the price of oil over the past year that’s prompting oil patch giants to show employees the door?” scoffed Alberta columnist Gillian Steward in the Star.

Harper has been saying that Canada “has the most generous immigration and refugee system in the world.”

This flies in the face of facts.

Under him, fees were raised to unconscionable levels for both immigrants and refugees, many of whom are desperately poor. Immigrant selection was scandalously skewed in favour of temporary foreign workers. Family reunification was made nearly impossible. Citizenship was delayed for tens of thousands, in two ways: by extending to four years from three the qualifying waiting period (in time to deprive voting rights to a people unlikely to have voted Conservative), and by demanding higher efficiency in English and French — the latter a worthy principle in the abstract but meaningless in practice, given that these people are already law-abiding taxpayers.

Waiting time for citizenship is about 12 months, far more for “non-routine” cases, 36 months.

The average processing time for Federal Skilled Workers is 20 months and more outside Quebec.

For sponsoring a spouse, common-law partner or dependent child, it is an average of 17 months.

For parents or grandparents, it is more than 69 months, not including the 45 months required for an “Assessment of Sponsor.”

Processing refugee applications takes an average of 19 months.

For privately sponsored refugee applications, it is more than double that, an average of 41 months.

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The government axed health benefits for refugee claimants, not just for failed applicants, as Harper claimed.

On Syrian refugees, Harper has misled Canadians at least thrice.

He attributed refugee flows entirely to the terrorist Islamic State, whereas hundreds of thousands of refugees had been fleeing Bashar Assad’s Syria long before ISIS reared its ugly head.

By pointing the figure exclusively at the Islamic State, Harper was trying to emphasize his war on ISIS and de-emphasize resettling refugees.

Harper also argued: “We cannot open the floodgates and airlift tens of thousands of refugees out of a terrorist war zone without proper process. That is too great a risk for Canada.” But neither the opposition parties nor refugee advocates were calling him to airlift tens of thousands, let alone without security clearance.

On Oct. 8 the Globe and Mail revealed that PMO had secretly ordered a halt to Syrian refugee processing in spring to vet all applications being handled by the department of immigration based on the list of vulnerable refugees provided by UNHCR, the refugee agency.

The government responded that it was only making sure that security was not being compromised.

But CTV News reported that “PMO staff went through the files to ensure that persecuted religious minorities with established communities already in Canada — ones that Harper could court for votes — were being accepted. Insiders say PMO actively discouraged the department from accepting applications from Shia and Sunni Muslims.‎”

The Globe, too, had a followup story — that PMO was not only prioritizing religious minorities but also selecting refugees “based on the age of children, and whether the family had run a business, and also spoke English or French, and had family in Canada.” Canada was also avoiding refugees from camps in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, where the population is mostly Sunni and Shiite.

Harper responded that his office was indeed giving priority to certain refugees (in effect, conceding that it was avoiding Sunni and Shiites) but that the policy was still not “exclusionary.”

All refugees selected by UNHCR for settlement are the most vulnerable. The Harper government was adding its own ideological and (Conservative) political filter. It was also selecting refugees based on religion, which is “prohibited under the law,” as Prof. Amir Attaran of the University of Ottawa was quoted as saying. “We would be rightly offended if it were written to be against black people.”

siddiqui.canada@gmail.com

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