Court rules against Conservative government’s refugee health cuts | Toronto Star

Conservative proposal deemed to be cruel and unusual by the courts. They wanted to deny insulin to diabetic children. Absolutely disgusting. I am glad the courts saw this for what it is, another attempt by Harper to turn us into the have/have-not state we see south of the border. How does he sleep at night?

What about this tho? Why is it not cruel to deny Canadians these benefits, but is cruel to deny them to refugees? Canadians don't get dental and vision, but of course they should. Actually save money by preventing more serious disease down the road with dental.

As for denying benefits to refugees whose claims have failed, that shouldn't be a issue because those refugees should be on their way home already.

Yet we do it to Canadian children all the time. Where's the outrage there?

I am not advocating dental and vision benefits for refugee claimants. The point is, as Andy alluded to, there is a process for managing refugees who are in the country illegally, there are border measures in place to keep illegal immigrants out of the country and yes, some shouldn't be here in the first place. However that is something to be determined through the refugee claimant process, and while this process transpires, and the possible deportation process which follows, the needs of the refugees and their children have to be considered.

Moreover, the fact that in this case that refugees designated country of origin was being used as a reason to deny the claimants life saving medicine is what makes it all the more disturbing. How more blatantly discriminatory can a government be without being outright racist? And these were people who were not denied but still undergoing the process.

In the end, it is our process which determines the speed of the decision, and our border management which allows for these people to get in in the first place. These areas need to be strengthened. Leaving innocent children who are at the mercy of the whims of their parents to fall into diabetic comas because they dont have the insulin they need on a daily basis is definitely not the answer.

And no we are not denying Canadian children medicine which is essential to their survival, not yet anyway, but give him some time.

What we primarily need is a system that determines refugee status very quickly and cut out a lot of the appeals. Then, the ones that are accepted would have the same status as any other immigrant, the ones that aren't would be on their way home. While they're waiting, give them the same care as Canadians get. That likely means dental etc would be covered under welfare.

Depends on whether the medicine/treatment is covered.

Like that poor girl who had to crowdfund her Kalydeco because the provincial governments were too busy dithering over the $ tag.

@Andy

I agree and that is not what was happening, people who were awaiting the process and happened to be from "DCO's" were denied all together.

This is a list of the the designated countries who were denied:
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Chile
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark,
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
Ireland
Israel (excludes Gaza and the West Bank)
Italy
Japan
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta
Mexico
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Slovak Republic
South Korea
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
United States of America

This means that people who were victims of human trafficking and brought here against their will were being denied benefits because they happen to be from the wrong place.

I am not sure if this is a case of the sloppy, poorly thought out policy of an incompetent government or just pure malice but I don't like it. I don't like it one little bit.

Funny that you implied racist motives were behind the changes, yet looking at that list the vast majority of those countries are predominantly first world and/or "white".

The Harperites don't like white people?

Depends on whether the medicine/treatment is covered.

Like that poor girl who had to crowdfund her Kalydeco because the provincial governments were too busy dithering over the $ tag.OK, but to be fair we are talking about an extremely rare treatment which only 100 Canadians would benefit from, and so it is not surprising that the policy around the treatment was not yet developed.

This will also be the case as new treatments become available for conditions that affect a very small percentage of the population. As these medicines are development, the government must decide on a case by case basis which will be allowed and which will not.

In the end, the government did the right thing and agreed that 100% of the treatment costs would be paid by the government and Madi Vanstone got her medicine and her situation also means that others like her will not have to go through the same headache. This was not malicious in my view, it was a case of policy catching up to medical tecnology.




Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/mother-of- ... z36W54JkDj

The drug was approved in Canada on Nov.26, 2012.

That's ironic, Harper doesn't accept that you can be from a white country and be a refugee, so yeah I guess he does.

I think the idea behind that list is that wealthy first world countries don't produce genuine refugees.

I haven't an opinion on whether that is true or not.

To me, worrying about this is the wrong end of the stick. Reform the refugee system so people don't spend endless time here in limbo, and give the benefits that refugees were enjoying to all Canadians. Then there's no problem. Of course the same refugee industry that fought these changes would also fight any changes that make the whole refugee adjudication process faster.

Oh, and do like the Aussies, and put people who come here without being sponsored to claim refugee status in camps so they can't disappear. They'll get proper health care there.

Yeah, no one really seems to know the formula.You would think that it is a list of countries that do not produce refugees or have very high standards of living or homogeneous populations but we see croatia on the list and they account for about 60,000 which puts them in the top 20 globally as a refugee country of origin.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM. ... &sort=desc

Experts seem to agree that the list is pretty arbitrary. My view is that he does not want to tarnish international relationships by accusing his friends of persecution. Any way you slice it, it is political. To say that a woman who has been trafficked into sexual slavery and is being forced to work as a prostitute in Canada is not in danger of persecution by returning to one of these countries is not realistic.

I could maybe see a merit if the claim was for political refugees but no distiction is made:


http://www.carl-acaadr.ca/our-work/issues/DCO

That's ironic, Harper doesn't accept that you can be from a white country and be a refugee, so yeah I guess he does.


No, what is ironic is your firm belief that the Cons are all a bunch of sheet wearing KKK, except when shown otherwise, and you are still able to talk out of your ass.

Just your usual amount of hot air.