New column day

Here, giving credit to the Saskatchewan Party for eventually doing the right thing in funding refugee health expenses - but questioning their selective and PR-motivated claim to compassion.

For further reading...

The timeline on the issue of refugee health expenses which led to no response from Brad Wall and his government includes the Cons' initial announcement and subsequent excuses for letting refugee claimants fend for themselves; their partial backtrack on the initial announcement; Manitoba's decision to pick up the slack for refugee claimants; and Cam Broten's challenge to Kelly Block's anti-immigrant fund-raising. And in recent days, we've learned the Cons aren't done, but are instead looking to push the costs of refugee settlement onto non-profit organizations.

I'll also particularly highlight Carol Goar's examples already known as a matter of public record - and apparently ignored by the Saskatchewan Party in deciding on its own response to the Cons' cuts:

(R)eports already are coming in: a 7-year-old epileptic boy in Hamilton was hospitalized for a severe seizure because he could not get medicine; a woman who had endured multiple rapes after she was sold into the sex trade couldn’t get an ultrasound for the fetus she was carrying; a Colombian man is desperately fundraising to pay Toronto General Hospital for life-saving abdominal surgery; two refugee claimants in Ottawa — one Peruvian, the other El Salvadoran — have stopped taking their post-traumatic stress medications.

All of which would seem to cry out for explanation as to how it took this long to recognize the need for action - not merely a declaration that at least Wall isn't quite as stubborn as Stephen Harper in eliminating assistance for those in need.