Senators’ Statements: World Refugee Day

Honourable senators, I rise today to mark World Refugee Day. As you may have heard, the numbers of displaced people in the world have reached yet another high at 65 million.

Imagine, that’s almost twice the population of our country.

I believe it is really time to consider new solutions to this global situation, which impacts not only those who are displaced by war, conflict or climate change, but all of us because we all have, I believe, a shared responsibility.

I have just returned from Geneva, from the first working meeting of the World Refugee Council, which was called into life by former Minister Lloyd Axworthy, to consider new approaches to the problem, because, as he says, we constantly default to border policy and visa regimes as refugee policy.

But in the midst of all this largely dismal news — and I hope, in the meantime, you recognize me as an optimistic person — I have come back with a few points of light that I would like to share with you. These points of light come from unusual places — places that bear an unequal share of the burden, in Africa and the Middle East. For example, Uganda provides open work permits for arriving refugees from South Sudan. Ethiopia gives land grants to refugees. Tanzania has given citizenship, not to a couple of thousand Burundian refugees, but to more than 160,000 Burundian refugees. What is Jordan doing with all those refugees? Their schools are running double shifts so that refugee children can also go to school.

As much as we pride ourselves on our own — I will say in the context of these — somewhat meagre contributions, it is fair to say that other parts of the world are doing much of the heavy lifting.

I also want to shine a huge lamplight on the work of World University Service of Canada, otherwise known as WUSC, an organization whose work all Canadians can be truly proud of. Since 1978, WUSC has run a unique youth-to-youth private sponsorship program where the students in Canada raise money, help students settle in and start life again as university students in Canada. They are in campuses throughout our country from Carleton University to the University of Victoria, and from Ryerson University to Nova Scotia Community College.

This year, in order to mark Canada’s one hundred and fiftieth birthday, I am really pleased to be working with WUSC and Universities Canada to reach out to the refugee alumni and ask them to identify their first significant, magical moment of belonging in Canada. We have called this campaign 150 Stories of Belonging. In a sense, I want to think of this as our gift back to Canada.

As these stories come in, I am struck by the common thread in many of them. Even as I grieve for the millions of displaced people in the world, I want to take a moment to share some optimism with you from the work of WUSC.