Canada to accept more refugees from Iraq and Syria

The Canadian government announced today that it is willing to accept another 10,000 refugees from Iraq and Syria displaced by war. That’s in addition to already resettling about 20,000 refugees from Iraq and about 2,500 from Syria.

Prime Minister Harper told a Toronto audience that the humanitarian crisis in Iraq and Syria cannot be solved by refugee policy alone.

He reiterated that military force must also be used to stop ISIS which has caused millions of people to flee their homes.

“We were witnessing mass slaughter at an alarming lightning pace that was sweeping across the region. For Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Mulcair to say things like we shouldn’t be participating militarily, we should just be doing humanitarian assistance, let me quote what those representative community groups in Canada said about that policy. ‘If your policy is humanitarian assistance without military support all you are doing is dropping aid on dead people.’ That’s not acceptable. We are a country that can contribute militarily and in a humanitarian sense and we are doing both.”

More than three million refugees have fled their home countries as ISIS militants wage a bloody war. Another 6.5 million people are displaced within their countries.