Manitobans not paid for ‘inconvenience’ of border crossers By: Dylan Robertson Posted: 7:00 PM CST Thursday, Dec. 13, 2018

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/12/2018 (1961 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The federal Liberals are giving a Christmas surprise to Quebecers living near the main entry point for asylum seekers, offering as much as $25,000 per household for “inconvenience”. Meanwhile, Manitobans will find nothing under their tree.

“It’s basically happening on people’s front doorsteps and impacting the quality of their lives, and there are people that have incurred loss as a result,” Border Security Minister Bill Blair said of Quebec on Thursday.

“We wanted to make sure those individual Canadians weren’t harmed as a result of the important work we have to do,” he told the Free Press.

For the past two years, thousands of asylum seekers have crossed into Canada on foot from the United States, because most cannot claim refugee status at a regular border crossing.

A surge of asylum seekers initially crossed near Emerson, Man., but those crossings have largely abated, with hundreds still entering Quebec monthly, largely along a rural street calld Roxham Road.

Ottawa has recently issued cheques to those Quebec residents. Media have reported payments ranging from $25,000 for seven residences on Roxham Road near the crossing, and $10,000 for the 16 homes down the street. Around the corner, payments of $2,000 or $2,500 are being offered to 20 residences.

If accurate, that amounts to 43 households receiving a total of roughly $380,000.

Blair’s office wouldn’t say how much money is coming until budget estimates are tabled, which is normally late March. Until then, “we’re not confirming any number,” Blair spokeswoman Marie-Emanuelle Cadieux said.

In any case, Blair said, none of this cash is coming to Manitoba because the number of crossings has drastically reduced, and it happened in rural areas.

“The circumstances in other jurisdictions have not been as impactful on individuals, and their lives, because of the more remote location.”

Quebec residents who received the cheques told media they were surprised by the payout, and it appears none had petitioned Ottawa for the cash. Blair did not specify which “certain costs” Quebecers have incurred.

Emerson-Franklin Reeve David Carlson chuckled when he heard about the payments.

“That is pretty amazing to me; I’m very shocked by that,” Carlson said.

“I wouldn’t even think that the government would think along those lines, to compensate people that are inconvenienced.”

Carlson started his term in October, but had followed the issue while it hit its peak last year. He said the majority of the crossers appeared in rural areas, where first responders arrived to try preventing frostbite or drownings.

In March 2017, Ottawa gave $30,000 to the Manitoba town’s fire department for its estimated cost of rescuing more people.

Still, Carlson said there were impacts on Emerson’s actual townsite:

“There was quite a bit of that door-knocking going on, and the fear in the community at the time was: if someone’s knocking at your door at two in the morning, there’s a bunch of people, and you don’t know what you’re looking at. You could [see] a woman with a child and a whole lot of people [hiding] in the background.”

That’s why local MP Ted Falk is demanding a similar payment for his constituents.

“They had their own experiences of people showing up at their doors, banging on their windows at the middle of the night,” he said.

“For some of that anxiety and discomfort that they’ve experienced, there’s got to be some compensation for that. Because that has not been the experience in Quebec.”

Falk said on Roxham Road, federal officials have been able to concentrate along a central route, limiting the interactions asylum seekers have had with locals, unlike in Manitoba.

“These folks in my riding have had to bear the brunt of all these interactions themselves. I think they need to be treated fairly, and that’s what I’m advocating for,” he said.

Falk raised the issue Thursday afternoon with Blair, who responded he’d look into whether Manitobans were also owed compensation, but that he personally was leaning against it.

Carlson was suspicious about the hush-hush nature of the payment, which Montreal newspaper La Presse unveiled Wednesday. As of Thursday evening, Ottawa still hadn’t issued a press release about payments in the Liberal-held riding.

“It’s very uncommon that they would do this without any kind of announcement,” Carlson said.

Blair said it was not an attempt to avoid a lawsuit: “Frankly, that has not been a consideration.”

Carlson said he’s unsure whether Emerson residents deserve the cash, noting that it might not be the best use of taxpayer dollars, but he said Ottawa may have opened a “Pandora’s box to a lot more” payouts.

“You don’t want to just say that Quebec-versus Manitoba-stuff; that doesn’t really help anybody. But it’s just very surprising they did that on the down-low, like that.”

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca