When Canada’s Justin Trudeau welcomed Syrian refugees with great pomp and the clear subtext of “Look how morally superior we are to Americans,” he didn’t publicize his intention to farm out the costs of this major photo-op to private individuals. Only a few of the refugees were to receive sufficient governmental aid. The rest were to be sponsored by private citizens who’d pledge $1,000 a month to support a refugee family.
Refugees were greeted with such enthusiasm and fanfare that they couldn’t help imagining a very different life than what actually awaited them in Canada. The eager sponsors of the first few months would go on TV and experience momentary stardom as they pledged their life savings to help the newcomers. But once the novelty wore off, they realized that $1,000 a month was quite a lot of money, especially with Canadian dollar in free fall and Trudeau’s rich-boy economic measures squeezing workers quite badly.
Sponsors started disappearing and leaving the refugee families stranded. One can’t blame them because private charity can never address complex social issues. Only a government can do that. Shifting governmental duties onto the shoulders of private individuals is not a good idea.
Clarissa's Blog 
Momentary stardom and momentary help are fit to go together.
All this talk of going on TV reminded me of Maimonides’ Eight Levels of Charity.
The second highest level is “to give to the poor without knowing to whom one gives, and without the recipient knowing from who he received.” The third (lower) level is “when one knows to whom one gives, but the recipient does not know his benefactor.” And so on.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/45907/jewish/Eight-Levels-of-Charity.htm
I suppose, both the refugee families and the sponsors knew each other personally. Must have been humiliating and frightening for the refugee families since private charity assumes the recepient receives only if and only as long as he is found worthy. And what can a refugee family do, once a sponsor disappears, probably after developing some kind of personal relationship with them? Phone him with “please, send more money”?
The humiliation factor and the inability to solve social problems is why I simply hate the idea of private charities. I am ready to pay higher taxes instead, and let the government do its job.
Btw, I am not the kind of person to pledge my “life savings to help the newcomers,” even when the newcomers are Jewish immigrants too, so I do not wish to sound judgemental of the sponsors. They have done much more than I would.
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I hate charities, too. Never seen them achieve anything but let people preen and self-congratulate.
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Another advantage of governmental programs over private charities lies in unabling recepients to plan their lives in advance and truly choose the best course of action for their families.
For instance, Jewish immigrants to Israel knew they had 0.5 (no education) – 1 year (with education) to study Hebrew in peace and quiet, take professional courses, etc.
Imagine both adults choosing to take a language course and then suddenly the money is cut off.
Libertarians seem to ignore this aspect (while enjoying the humiliation aspect of private charity).
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Outsourcing handling refugees to private charities had also another purpose – as far as I know these charities were quite selective about whom they sponsored. They strongly favored Christians over Muslims, families over single men, etc. So any potential accusations of being not-PC enough (and accepting everybody in need) were outsourced by the government as well.
As for the state of the Canadian economy – as much as you may dislike Trudeau and his photo-ops, the state of the Canadian economy has nothing to do with Trudeau but much to do with the oil prices. What is happening to Canada is just a milder version (because the economy is healthier and there are no sanctions) of what is happening to Russia. In fact, the necessary condition for Canadian exports (other than oil) to be competitive is to have Canadian dollar as low as it is now. If you think of it, Canada is just a raw material / industrial colony of the (post industrial) US. (And for a country too weak to influence the course of the global economic trends it is actually not a bad idea to have a feel-good show-off leader.) And we (Canadians) should pray that Trump fails to rebuild the US industry to any significant degree (if he really attempts to do that, for populist reasons). He will fk up the US, sure, but he will fk up Canada first.
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I would so love for Trump or whoever to bring back the manufacturing. They won’t be able to staff the factories and will have to bring in Mexicans. That would be so much fun to watch.
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Trump is unlikely to succeed, but he still may screw Canada up while trying. For instance, he does not have to really abolish NAFTA. It is enough to just create a credible threat of abolishing NAFTA, and some manufacturing will move from Canada to the US. Remember, Canada is not a third world country, for instance moving car industry to Canada was just borderline useful for business in the first place. The more I think about it, the more I actually feel that Canada will be the MAIN victim of Trump’s policies…
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I can’t seriously talk about manufacturing in 2016. It’s all getting robotized anyway. It’s an entirely defunct topic.
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As you wish. Knowledge-based economy (whatever this is) moving to the States will not be any better.
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It would move to the Sates because Trump is so cute? 🙂 🙂 Remember that Canada will be welcoming millions of highly educated new immigrants through professional immigration within the next several decades.
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The dynamic taking place will be simple: lower taxation south of the border.
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“The dynamic taking place will be simple: lower taxation south of the border.”
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As a longtime creature of living on both sides of the border and having relatives on both sides, I can help clear something up.
The car industry in Canada is the product of threats by the Canadian government to bar the big three from selling cars in Canada. It’s the only reason.
The United States has run a trade deficit with Canada since NAFTA started, and whenever anything related to the treaty comes up, the Canadian stance is a sort of martyr-complex tirade.
The United States does not exist (per se) to serve others before it’s own population, especially when those peoples’ engagement with anything difficult on the world is COMPLETELY optional.
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“The United States does not exist (per se) to serve others before it’s own population, especially when those peoples’ engagement with anything difficult on the world is COMPLETELY optional.”
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Canada is doing more than enough to impact its’ own economy. Pretending that it’s some evil “south of the border” scheme is loopy. No-one cares that much, and when they do, it isn’t malevolent.
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Absolutely. Just like nobody is impacting the US economy more than Americans themselves.
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“Shifting duties onto the shoulders of private individuals”
…actually both business and government agencies constantly do just that …
…they’re always expecting the customer/consumer/client to “finish the job for them” while still being the ones who get the paycheck.
That’s the actual common norm.
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“Canada will be welcoming millions of highly educated new immigrants through professional immigration within the next several decades”
I know you’re emotionally attached to the idea of personal improvement through immigration but… this is impossible.
Who’s goingto build the housing for these millions of highly educated immigrants?
Who’s going to build and staff all the other infrastructure that such an increase in population will need?
Canadians? I don’t think so. More likely millions more low skiled and low education immigrants would have to be brought in to serve the highly educated immigrants (nb. I use the word ‘serve’ intentionally).
This vision of mass high skilled immigration with no downsides is essentially a pyramid scheme.
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It’s all getting automated. Prefab houses already require only the tiniest number of actual men working.
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The bottom line of the discussion is that I don’t think Trump spells doom and gloom to Canada. I don’t even think he’ll do much damage to Ukraine. I believe that the danger of Trump is vastly exaggerated and all of this drama is unwarranted.
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I agree, but want to add a warning.
The reason Canadians believe that there are any future good citizens with redeeming qualities to be found in the Near East, is because you had a wave of immigration from Lebanon and Syria which was largely Christian, non-violent, and decent.
That ended.
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