Report suggests Tories feared UN backlash over refugee health cuts

A couple of weeks ago, the Harper government seemed to backtrack on their controversial policy to slash refugee health benefits.

Up until late June, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) insisted they were implementing health care cuts which would leave some refugee claimants with only 'urgent care' while others would be denied all care unless they have a disease that would be a risk to the public, such as tuberculosis.

And then in late June, with no fanfare, CIC quietly changed a paragraph on their website noting they wouldn't cut benefits for a large group of refugees, specifically those selected and resettled from abroad by the government (government assisted-refugees or GARs) and those privately-sponsored refugees who receive federal financial assistance.

While pleased by the apparent about-face, the policy shift had refugee advocates perplexed.

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Did the unflappable Harper government cave-in to public pressure? Did the protests staged by doctors across the country actually work? Did the Tories' find a heart?

Apparently it didn't have anything to do with any of that.

According to an article in the Embassy Magazine, the Harper government made the change, in part, because it feared that the UN wouldn't send refugees to Canada if it went forward with the health cuts.

"To optimize Canada's ability to continue to accept referrals from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), to uphold Canada's efforts to protect victims of human trafficking and to provide the Government with the authority to cover the costs of expanded health benefits to public policy and H and C arrivals who receive resettlement assistance in the form of income support from the federal or Quebec government," notes the order.

The planned changes also reinstate coverage of psychological counselling for victims of human trafficking.

NDP immigration critic Jinny Sims said the government's suggestion that the UN refugee agency wouldn't send Canada refugees who wouldn't get health-care coverage shows the "inhumanity" of what was originally proposed.

"Here you have people who are living in camps, who are diabetic, who are being controlled through insulin. And suddenly, what you're saying is 'Canada is not going to cover those costs.' Why would the UNHCR people put these refugees' lives in danger?" she told Embassy Magazine.

According to CIC, Canada received approximately 12,500 refugees under the 'Refugee and Humanitarian Resettlement Program in 2011. That same year, almost 25,000 people made claims under the ''In-Canada Asylum Program.'

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