Kenney statement shows who are the real anti-Canadians

Recently, Jason Kenney, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, accused social justice groups that support the rights of refugees and temporary foreign workers as "anarchists and anti-capitalist mobs" and "hard-line extremists and anti-Canadian".

The only group that is truly anti-Canadian in all of this is Minister Kenney and the Harper Conservatives, who continue to demonstrate just how out of touch they are with Canadian values and heritage. If we had the immigration laws years ago that the Harper government has pushed on the Canadian people, many of our parents and grandparents would never have been able to come to this land to make it the great country it is.

Canada is a nation that was built on the strength and resourcefulness of millions of new comers that came here to build a life for themselves and their families. The legacy is a Canada that until recently was respected around the world for its tolerance, good will, and enthusiasm to build a diverse and vibrant national community. But that was the past.

The Canada that Minister Kenney and the Conservatives aspire to is quite different. It is a Canada where the vast majority of temporary foreign workers are on a treadmill that denies them the chance of permanently immigrating. It is a Canada that has shut the door for workers to sponsor their families. Hundreds of UFCW Canada members across the country have complained to us that it is near impossible for them to bring their loved ones to Canada.

So Canada is no longer a country based on nation building and family reunification. The new immigration is a system constructed solely on exploitation, but to point that out now makes you an "extremist".

The Harper government has shown once again that it is one of the most anti-immigrant regimes in Canadian history. Justice, fairness and tolerance are not extremist values. They are Canadian values that are now under attack by the real hard-line extremists.

In solidarity,

Wayne Hanley

National President