Article content

Stephen Harper is facing what may be the toughest moment of his electoral career. Once the tide turns against a government the way it’s been turning against the Conservatives the past month, it’s a monumental task to reverse. After nine years of striving to control every available lever of power, the Prime Minister must feel he is being swamped by events he can’t control. And he is.

[np_storybar title=”Read & Debate” link=””] Find

Full Comment on Facebook

[/np_storybar]

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Kelly McParland: Harper faces a six-week battle to turn the tide and save his job Back to video

The refugee crisis is not his fault. Indeed, of the three party leaders, he’s the one who has been to the refugee camps, has seen the horrors, who knows up close what it looks like when people lose everything they have. He’s also the one who has had to answer to families who have lost loved ones to Canada’s military activities since he became prime minister. He has increased the number of Syrians Canada has pledged to take. His government was smeared unjustly when it was accused of refusing entry to the family of the drowned Syrian-Kurdish child, Alan Kurdi, a report that wasn’t true. And while Canada may have been slow in the number of Syrians it has welcomed to date, let’s get real: the situation in the Middle East is chaos, you can’t just send a planeload of civil servants over to scoop up the first available families and jet them back to Ottawa. The numbers are in the millions; there are immense difficulties in dealing with the situation, as European countries have discovered. This is a crisis that has been going on for four years – just because Canadians only woke up to it a week ago doesn’t mean it just began.