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When an Iranian man and a Somali woman set themselves on fire in an Australian detention camp on a small Pacific island recently, Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was coldly pragmatic, urging his country to hold fast to its refusal of all uninvited refugees.

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Australians “cannot be misty-eyed about this,” he said.

Likewise, when Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court ruled Australia’s camp on its Manus Island is illegal and must close, his resolve persisted. Between PNG and the island nation of Nauru, Australia has diverted and detained more than 1,200 sea-borne migrants, leaving these asylum seekers in limbo, and Australians with a big problem.

So now, in an election campaign in which both main parties agree on the blanket rejection policy, politicians have been casting around for an international solution, a distant place to unload the wretched of Nauru and Manus, as if to say, “If we will not be misty-eyed, then who might?”

Enter Justin Trudeau, dewy-eyed heartthrob of geopolitics, who has been busy telegraphing his benevolence toward refugees since long before his election. As one Australian parliamentarian put it, he is the “obvious” choice.

Although Canada has met its goal of welcoming 25,000 Syrian refugees, Trudeau cannot claim to have saved as many as Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has led the European response, or even Stefan Lofven, the prime minister of of Sweden, which has taken the most per capita. But the instant popularity of the Canada plan, despite no official confirmation, seems to suggest Australians are moved more by Trudeau’s reputation than his record.