Six children will soon be leaving a Syrian prison camp on a flight for Canada, but delays in their mother’s security assessment means the Quebec woman will not be able to come with them.
The mother, who hails from Quebec, had until today to decide if she would allow her children to join other Canadians on the repatriation flight, or if they would remain with her in Syria, according to Alexandra Bain of the group Families Against Violent Extremism.
“I’m shocked. It doesn’t make any sense,” Bain told the Canadian Press in an interview Saturday. “It’s not how I expect Canada to behave.”
The oldest of the six children are two girls, 14 and 13 years old, followed by four boys, the youngest of which is five years old. They have been languishing in a prison camp in northeast Syria with their mother since 2018. Now, they’re set to be separated.
“What she’s been told in the last few days is that the children is eligible for repatriation but she’s expected to stay in the detention camp,” Lawrence Greenspon, the lawyer of the Quebec woman, told CTV News.
The Quebec woman and her children are among the numerous foreign nationals who are trapped in camps in war-torn Syria run by Kurdish forces who recovered the area from ISIS forces.
Last November, Global Affairs notified the 38-year-old woman that her family qualified for repatriation because of “deteriorating conditions” in the camp and “threats to her children’s safety.”
She was told officials had “initiated assessments.” CTV News is not publishing the woman’s name due to the sensitivity of the case. Similar letters were sent to 26 other Canadian women and children, including a group who sued in federal court to get repatriation.
The Quebec woman wasn’t part of that initial court case, and four months after getting the letter, her security assessment still hasn’t been completed.
When CTV News inquired about what was missing from the woman’s application and what the status was, considering that she’d been told she met the criteria in November, Global Affairs responded that while they were aware of the Canadian women and children detained in Syria, they could not provide specific details “due to privacy and operational security considerations.”
“We continue to evaluate the provision of extraordinary assistance, including repatriation to Canada, in line with the Policy Framework adopted in 2021,” Grantly Frankin, spokesperson with Global Affairs, said in an emailed statement.
Greenspon said that it violates Canada’s policies to separate the mother and children.
“It’s completely unacceptable,” Greenspon said. “Contrary to every … treaty Canada has signed, and contrary to policy framework of Global Affairs that says thou shall not separate mother and children.”
He added that if there are issues with the woman’s application, there are currently RCMP officers at the camps in Syria, who could interview her in order to clear up whatever is delaying her application being approved.
“The questions they have for her related to when and where she would go once she returns to Canada are perfectly fair questions,” Greenspon said. “Questions about how she got to northeastern Syria, and what she was doing prior to her getting there would be questions outside the bounds of necessity in determining if she should come back to Canada or not.”
Bain told the Canadian Press that the Quebec woman had been beaten and attacked while in detention.
Advocates say the woman’s husband is missing and she doesn’t have relatives in Canada. Four of them were born in Canada, and two were born in Syria. When the children return to Quebec, they will be put in foster care.
“She’s doing this for her children. And she’s terrified that she’s doing the wrong thing,” Bain, whose organization helps families whose loved ones are caught up in violent extremist groups, said.
A flight out is expected any day. On that plane is expected to be the six children, along with six Canadian women and 13 other children who the federal government agreed to bring home as part of the court action.
But the Quebec woman will not be with them, and she has no idea when she’ll be able to see her kids again.
“Her primary impulse is to get them out of harms’ way, but she’s not getting the reassurance from her government that she will be able to participate in her children’s upbringing,” Greenspon said.
News of this Quebec mother’s decision to allow her children to fly home to Canada without her comes just days after a group of foreign-born mothers of Canadian children were given an ultimatum to decide if they would relinquish guardianship of their children to bring them to Canada.
Unlike the Quebec woman, they decided not to surrender their kids.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
