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OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Stephen Harper says his government’s policy of prioritizing certain refugees, primarily Christians and other religious minorities, isn’t discriminatory.

The government is merely prioritizing those Christians and other Muslim minorities — as opposed to Muslim Sunnis and Shiites — who are being targeted by the self-proclaimed Islamic State, Harper said this week.

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“We are giving priority to the people who are the most vulnerable,” Harper said during a campaign event in Richmond, B.C.

“It is the ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria who are, in fact, targeted for extermination by the armed group Islamic State and their allies.”

What Harper didn’t mention, however, is that all the resettled refugee candidates Ottawa is considering are far from Islamic State’s reach and are located in places like Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

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Faisal Alazem of the Syrian Canadian Council says the Conservatives “know full well the majority of people who are paying the price are Sunni Muslim.