Syrian refugee crisis makes unexpected return as campaign issue

It's unlikely to be a so-called October surprisean event that could have a drastic effect on the course of the election but the re-emergence of the Syrian refugee crisis as an issuewas unexpected, given how other issueshad overtaken the campaign.

With the niqab,the recently signedTrans-Pacific Partnership and the results of daily pollingmaking the headlines, the refugee crisis had mostly fallen off the radar, save for its appearance at the election debates.

• Stephen Harper denies PMO staff vetted Syrian refugee files
• ANALYSIS:What do voters hear in Conservatives' message on refugees?
• Canadians want more to be done to help refugees, polls suggest
• Stephen Harper says Canada will not airlift refugees without proper security screening

But a report in The Globe and Mail on Thursdaychanged the channel, at least for the day. The newspaper reportedthat the Prime Minister's Office and Harper himself intervened to stopCanadian immigration officials fromprocessing Syrian refugee cases in the spring.

Not only had the Prime Minister's Officehaltedthe process, the paper said, but it hadaskedCitizenshipand Immigrationfor the filesof someSyrian refugeesso they could be vetted by the PMO, a move that would haveforcedfamilies already declaredrefugees by the United Nations to wait longer to come to Canada.

Mulcair offers strongest rebuke

Not surprisingly, the reaction poured in from all sides. NDP Leader Tom Mulcairoffered the strongest rebuke, sayingHarper had already beenholding up the refugee process before he "appeared before us to emote,talking about his own family after seeing the body of that little child on that beach in Turkey."

"That is abject behaviour on the part of the Canadian prime minister. It is a shame on Canada."

It seemed to be a tougher stance than the one he took last month, when thepicture ofAlanKurdi, theboywhowas found dead on the beach, had pushed theSyrian refugee crisis, and Canada's response to it, into the headlines.

Back then, it seemed, Mulcair was reluctant to cast blame for that particular incident. Instead, itwas Liberal Leader Justin Trudeauwho was asking for Harper to apologize tothe father of the boy.

On Thursday, though, Trudeau seemed a little more muted in his comments. He said he wasn't surprised the governmentintervened in the refugee file, but then went on to criticize it on a more generalscale, saying it "has always behavedin an irresponsible manner and interferes."

While the Globe's story said the PMO did not directly respond to a request for comment, on Thursday, the Conservatives certainly reacted.

'Screening out threats'

First came a statementfrom Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, who said the government doesn't normally comment on leaks, but he acknowledged that it had indeedput a temporary halt to the refugeeprocess and that anaudit had taken place.

He said an audit of the first tranche of Syrian government-assisted refugees was undertaken as a "prudent step to ensure the integrity of our refugee referral system."

That processing resumed "only after there was confidence that our procedures were adequate to identify those vulnerable persons in most need of protection while screening out threats to Canada," he said.

But Alexanderlater sent another updatedstatement specifically to addressthe allegations that PMO staffers had vetted the refugee applications themselves.

"Political staff are not involved in the approval of refugee applications," Alexanderadded. "In addition, no change in the status of those approvals occurred, nor could have occurred, as a result of the audit."

Alexander also noted that the process was eventually restarted after a few weeks of delayafter no threats were found. It did not affect the processing ofprivately sponsored files

Harper himself then addressed the issue at a campaign stop in B.C.Before divinginto his stump speech, he insistedthat"politicalstaff are never involved in approving refugee applications."

Those decisions, he said,are made by officials in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration.

But why the government decidedtoconductanaudit at that particular moment seems unclear.ACanadian Press story said the review resultedafter U.S.intelligence reports suggested those refugeescould pose a risk.

And while the PMO may not have been involved in approving or vetting the refugee applications, it is not known whether it had access to or sawthose files.

Conservative candidateLisa Raitttold CBC's Power & Politics host Rosemary Barton that it was not her understanding that the government has done this before with other refugees.

"But I can tell you this, that this was a very unique case," she said.

"Weknow that there's lots of strife there. And you want to make sure that you get the most vulnerable, those ethnic and those religious minorities that are truly being wiped off the face of the earth in that place."