Harper Struggling to Stay Even

The latest Harris Decima poll showed 39% of respondents said Harper wasn’t working hard enough since he closed down Parliament.

So the other day he did something new for him -- he invited news media cameras to the start of a cabinet meeting to show his government is still hard at work even if there’s nobody over in Parliament.

Ministers hold news conferences for next to no reason; one repeated an announcement made last July.

Even military aircraft carrying refugees from Haiti are ordered to land in Ottawa for the cameras rather than in Montreal where most of their Haitian-Canadian sponsors live. Photo-ops with Harper cabinet ministers are a lot easier in Ottawa.

But the problems continue. Quebec premier Jean Charest is fighting Federal Immigration minister Jason Kenney over how many Haitian refugees should be let in.

Charest says more; Kenney says there are enough as is.

Charest wants to allow Haitian Canadians to sponsor not just “parents, grand-parents and children under 18” but brothers, sisters and children over 18 as well. That’s a lot more people.

Kenney says that would mean thousands more Haitians coming in and soon they too would be bringing in their extended families and then other ethnic communities would want the same rights. There would be no end to it.

Charest found a loophole in the 1991 Immigration Law which allows the Province of Quebec to decide for itself the extent of sponsorship limits, and he’s using it. So add about another 3,000 Haitians.

And poor Harper gets the brickbats from Haitian-Canadians for being mean despite all he’s done so far for refugees from Haiti.

Some days it seems you just can’t win, no matter how many smiling photos you have taken.