Reader questions “troubling” assertions

Dear Editor,

In his letter of April 1 2020, “Trudeau not doing what’s best for Canada,” Russ Horner makes several questionable and troubling assertions, conveyed in inflammatory language. I took some time to wade through a number of Horner’s letters written over the past few years and consistently found he typically selects snippets of credible information, about which he makes questionable claims and assertions, while providing little to no concrete evidence to support his claims. His standard practice is to reduce seemingly complex matters to a few simplistic assertions, while using highly provocative language to promote his message.

For instance, in his letter of August 30, 2017, he suggests that many “queue jumping” migrants crossing into Canada “may be deadly germ carriers that could spread disease to the rest of us” and that “many may be criminals, or worse, terrorists.” He will likely reject the statistic provided by the United Nations, a body that he claims to be “corrupt,” that between February 2017 and December 2018, less than 0.5 per cent of refugee claimants who had entered Canada at a non-official border crossing had a serious criminal background.

In his April 1, 2020 letter he continues in this xenophobic tradition, referring to asylum seekers, as “undesirables” and “illegal migrants” who “flood ” into Canada and who “swell the welfare rolls for years, up to twenty years.” With not a shred of evidence Mr. Horner has determined that “these people” who are “from mainly Africa” with their “designer luggage” carried by “RCMP bellhops” are not in fact ” desperate refugees.” He provides no explanation as to why so many of these individuals are seemingly willing to take significant risks, leave their country, friends, extended family, etc. and come all this way, other than to suggest that asylum seekers come to “take advantage of our generous social benefits” paid for by us, “not them.” Mr. Horner apparently didn’t feel the need to inform the reader that Canada, under Canadian and international law, is obligated to accept asylum seekers regardless of how they enter the country. But he does provide a credible factual snippet: during the last three years, some “57,000 migrants” have crossed into Canada. This figure is in the ball park, but what Horner doesn’t tell the reader is that at least 10,000 of these individuals’ claims were rejected, with another 2,000 no longer applying (Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada). Horner’s omissions: oversight or manipulation?
Mr. Horner’s explanation for the” illegal migrant” problem as he sees it, is that Trudeau, “a communist dictator wannabe” (letter October 29, 2019) ignored the matter until recently, when Donald Trump, a man Horner clearly admires, closed the border. But in fact, the “illegal migrant” problem we are told is part of a grand scheme by Trudeau and billionaire George Soros to install a “one world government.”
That he continuously voices unsupported opinions and outlandish claims is of sufficient concern on its own. But doing so while deliberately using inflammatory and disparaging language, some would say racist, such as, “undesirables,” “these people,” “them,” “deadly germ carriers,” “criminals,” “terrorists,” “queue jumpers,” and “illegal migrants,” could conceivably contribute to anti-immigrant sentiment, discrimination and acts of violence, all of which we are familiar with in Canada and throughout the world. Fortunately, as the demolition of his People’s Party in the last federal election indicates, most Canadians, in this nation of immigrants, don’t share his xenophobic and toxic opinions.

Mike Byrne