The woman behind Canada's immigration misery

Who is Elinor Caplan? The altogether corpulent, nay Wagnerian, Elinor Caplan is Canada's open-door immigration minister.

She was parachuted into her Toronto riding of Thornhill as Liberal candidate over the objections of the local Liberal Party riding association in 1997 by the good pleasure of our current prime minister, Jean Chretien (who delights all Canadians by his inability to articulate even very simple ideas in either of Canada's two official languages, English and French).

Ms Caplan has shown that she not above bringing her religion into politics: to wit, telling a Yad Vashem Society gathering in November 1999, that her crowning moment, after becoming immigration minister, was signing the deportation orders against two elderly East Europeans suspected of being World War Two Nazi collaborators, then intoning "kaddish," the Jewish prayer of the dead.

Minister Caplan asserted last Tuesday that supporters of the Canadian Alliance, the Canadian Liberal Party's chief rival were "Holocaust deniers, racists and bigots." But:

Meanwhile, Sikh and Tamil fanatics still attached to the murderous politics of their homelands, who en masse support the Liberal Party and whose leaders are now and again feted by Liberal Party suits (such as our Finance Minister Paul Martin), are, of course, in no way or sense, needless to say, ever decried as either "racists" or "bigots" by any Liberal Party apparatchiks.

And there you have it. Major Canadian newspapers appear to be coming round to our views:

EDITORIAL: Queen of smear

Elinor Caplan has become the poster girl of the Liberal smear campaign.

THE immigration minister has quite successfully enraged millions of Canadian Alliance supporters by suggesting that followers of the party are holocaust deniers, bigots and racists.

Her remarks leave us wondering if there is anything to which the Liberals won't stoop in attacking an opponent.

The Alliance is a legitimate political party supported by Canadians right across this country. It also happens to be the most ethnically diverse of any political party in this campaign, based on the candidates it has fielded.

So, what gives her the right to spout such hateful remarks when they are simply not backed up by facts?

Caplan justifies her comments by pointing to the likes of Jim Keegstra, a well-known holocaust denier who is said to be organizing an entirely non-sanctioned political rally for the Alliance somewhere in Alberta.

Well, hang on a minute.

Keegstra has about as much to do with the Alliance as some pedophile has with the Liberal party simply because he happened to have voted Liberal last election. No doubt, if we looked hard enough we might even find one.

This is absolutely the worst form of guilt by association, a professional smear job that debases not just the Liberals but our entire democratic process.

We'd fully expect the prime minister to yank the collar of his attack dog, but he's too busy applauding his spinmeisters for smearing Stockwell Day's religious beliefs.

It's unbelievable that a party that preaches liberal values like tolerance and diversity has sunk to these depths. Its supporters should be ashamed, even if their leaders most certainly aren't.

Should the Liberals win this election -- and the polls certainly suggest as much -- it will be a tainted victory, one in which smears were used to divert public attention from this government's shameful record of abuse of the public's trust in awarding government largess.

Whatever happened to the real issues of this campaign?

How is it that this election has been successfully turned into a de facto lynching of anyone who would dare challenge the Liberal view of the world?

It's enough to make you sick.

Saturday, November 18, 2000

Caplan's slurs

By John Meyer

Midland, Ont. -- Why did Elinor Caplan call the Alliance Party the home of racists and bigots? Because it works. The immigration lobby has been phenomenally successful over the past 30 years in killing debate on immigration, using the type of simple-minded smear tactics that Ms. Kaplan is demonstrating.

Completely unaccountable for any of its environmental, social or structural deficit consequences, immigration stands as an untouchable policy. This is a tribute to the manipulative skills of those who have profited so immensely from it.

The Alliance probably would relate immigration policy loosely to the welfare of the Canadian people. To push this radical change through what would certainly be a massive barrage from special-interest groups, a referendum would be required. Since the world's highest rate of immigration has never enjoyed public support, lower levels would be a given.

Immigration policy made accountable, in the national interest and done democratically -- scary stuff, indeed.

Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien learns Auschwitz politics the hard way