00:01:43.120A year ago, he became the first Syrian president to address the UN General Assembly since 1967.
00:01:49.860Today, he was back for a second round, talking about the Golan Heights in Israel,
00:01:54.240joking about Donald Trump, talking about a peace deal with Israel that he says is 90% done.
00:02:00.680A head of state doing head of state things. And yesterday, the UN Refugee Agency put out a report
00:02:08.120on Syria. Let me show you what it said. As of August 31st, just a few weeks ago, 1.8 million
00:02:15.880Syrians have gone home from the neighboring countries. And another 2 million who were
00:02:21.240displaced inside Syria have gone back to their town. So almost 4 million people in 21 months
00:02:27.800have gone home. Now, where are they coming from? Mostly Turkey, about 640,000 by the end of April,
00:02:35.160according to the UN. Erdogan says 600,000 in 2025 alone. Then Lebanon, about a third. Then
00:02:41.960Jordan, about a fifth of them. The poor countries, the countries next door, the ones that took in1.00
00:02:46.680millions with no welfare state to speak of. Now look for Europe on that chart. Look for Germany.
00:02:51.940Look for Canada. You won't find them. The UN doesn't even bother with a line for us.0.58
00:02:57.020Here's the German number. There are 940,000 Syrian citizens living in Germany. It's astonishing.
00:03:06.600That's the federal government's own registry as of last November. And the number who went home
00:03:11.300with government help from December 2024 to April, about 3,700. So Turkey, 640,000 went home.
00:03:21.360Germany, 3,700. Surrounding error. So let's ask the obvious question, why did they come in the
00:03:29.360first place? Remember, we can do this. Remember Justin Trudeau at the airport with the winter
00:03:34.340coats? It was a civil war, barrel bombs, Assad, the Islamic State. Trudeau saw his election issue0.88
00:03:40.800to show he was more compassionate than Stephen Harper, more globalist, a different sort of
00:03:45.740candidate. It worked for him. The whole country was told to bear the cost because it would just
00:03:50.540be temporary, because it was an emergency. And what a cost. You know, Statistics Canada looked
00:03:57.300at the Syrians who came in that first wave. On census day 2016, 24% of the men were working,
00:04:04.5008% of the women. More than half spoke neither English nor French. Obviously, they speak Arabic.
00:04:09.900And years later, StatCan tracked the government-assisted refugees, the cohort that came in 2016. Four years on, 70% were still on social assistance. Not on their feet, they were on welfare.
00:04:24.940Germany's numbers are the same story, bigger.
00:04:27.640Half of the working age Syrians in Germany are on Bergergeld, it's called, that's welfare.
00:04:33.74052% according to the German Economic Institute.0.63
00:04:36.800The employment rate is 42%, not the unemployment rate, the employment rate.
00:04:42.040Only 42% are working compared to 56% for foreigners generally.0.99
00:06:03.300June 30th, he signs the executive order.
00:06:05.560The European Union lifted its economic sanctions the same month.
00:06:09.060july 2025 the state department takes al-shara's old group off the terrorist now i don't know if
00:06:15.440that's a good idea but i'm just telling you what they did november 2025 less than a year ago the
00:06:20.960un security council votes unanimously to delist them as a terrorist three days later he's in the
00:06:27.460oval office the first syrian president ever to visit the white house december 2025 it's moving
00:06:33.280fast isn't it congress repeals the caesar act that's a sanctions law named after a witness
00:06:38.880Caesar, who documented Syrian torture. And Canada, our own government, takes Syria off its list of
00:06:45.240state supporters of terrorism, too. February this year, Anita Anand, our foreign minister,
00:06:51.480lifts the economic sanctions Canada had kept on since 2011. August, just last month,
00:06:58.200Washington takes Syria off the state sponsors of terrorism list again. I don't know if I believe
00:07:02.860that, but that's what the Americans say. The Kurdish militia dissolves itself into the national
00:07:07.400army. Hopefully that's a good thing. I don't know. Saudi Arabia is now pouring in billions of1.00
00:07:12.820dollars. The World Bank says rebuilding Syria will cost $216 billion. It's a lot of work to do
00:07:19.080in a country that's missing millions of its own people. It needs young Syrians to help build the0.93
00:07:24.520country up. Is Syria perfect? Of course not. I sure wouldn't want to live there. And by the way,1.00
00:07:30.040they kicked out all their Jews decades ago. Wouldn't want to go there. And there's sectarian1.00
00:07:35.000killing of the druids in the south and christians who remain are at risk there are still isis
00:07:40.880stragglers there damascus itself has said it isn't ready for mass returns all at once
00:07:46.120but not perfect is not the legal test for being a refugee let me read you the actual
00:07:51.660law on refugees the refugee convention says protection ends when a person quote
00:07:57.760can no longer because the circumstances in connection with which he had been recognized
00:08:04.360as a refugee have ceased to exist, continued to refuse to avail himself of the protection
00:08:10.620of the country of his nationality. Now that's sort of a technical way of saying when you're
00:08:16.200no longer in trouble at home, you have to go home. It's in our law too, section 108 of the
00:08:23.660Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Refugee protection ceases when, quote, the reasons for
00:08:29.520which the person sought refugee protection have ceased to exist they're not refugees anymore
00:08:34.820legally they are not refugees anymore the reason in the first place was Bashar Assad Assad is gone
00:08:41.780the reason was a civil war the war is over the reason was Syria was a pariah state its president
00:08:48.340was just at the UN now the UN refugee agency doesn't want to hear this and may have put out
00:08:54.160a paper saying the situation hasn't changed in a manner that is durable and fundamental enough
00:08:58.880for cessation. Well, of course it said that. The UN High Commission on Refugees is a refugee agency.
00:09:04.360Refugees are its business, and it's the same agency handing out $100 a head to Syrians in
00:09:09.920Lebanon to go home, though. So what are serious countries doing? In Germany, Chancellor Mertz
00:09:17.260stood next to al-Sharah in Berlin in March and said, 8 out of 10 Syrians in Germany should go
00:09:23.640back over the next three years. 8 out of 10. That's the German middle-of-the-road chancellor.
00:09:29.640That's not the alternative for Deutschland right-wing party. And Germany is slowly doing it.
00:09:34.960Its refugee office reviewed 8,320 Syrian protection files in the first half of this year and revoked
00:09:42.84023% of them. Now, new Syrian asylum claims, 95% are rejected. They started deporting criminals
00:09:51.900and they pay for the flight and gave a startup grant if you go on your own. Austria started a
00:09:58.460thousand euros in December 24, now up to 3,000 euros a person to go home. By the way, that's
00:10:04.720like a year's income in Syria. They reviewed 13,000 Syrian files and canceled or cut 4,400 of
00:10:11.840them. They did the first deportations of Syrians in the EU last July. In the United States, Trump
00:10:18.700ended temporary protected status for Syrians a year ago, 60 days to leave, and the DHS pays a
00:10:25.120stipend and the airfare to anyone who self-deports through its app. Is it popular? Well, in Germany,
00:10:32.54061% of Germans say the Syrians should go home. And amongst Syrians in the region,
00:10:39.520the UN's own surveys say more than 80% want to go back. Not forced, they want to.
00:10:43.320well what about canada we took in more than a hundred thousand syrians since 2015
00:10:50.960trudeau trudeau got on the phone with al-shara within two months of him taking power we lifted
00:10:56.920the sanctions we took syria off the terror list we even have a non-resident ambassador now
00:11:01.360and on the question of the refugees going home nothing though not a word from mark carney not
00:11:07.240a word from the immigration minister lena dyab mark miller said back in december of 2024 that
00:11:12.780we'd be continuing to process syrian asylum claims case by case but but there's no asylum
00:11:20.080case anymore it's fine now germany the uk australia and netherlands have all hit pause
00:11:26.400why are we still bringing in non-refugee syrians still accepting them from a country whose president
00:11:33.980we've normalized think about that ottawa says syria is safe enough to trade with safe enough0.84
00:11:40.780to phone safe enough to delist just not safe enough to send the migrants home to that's not
00:11:46.240a refugee policy that's a permanent immigration program that we never voted for so what could it
00:11:52.300look like here it's not radical germany and austria wrote the playbook one a review every
00:11:58.140syrian in canada on a refugee status gets a cessation review under section 108 the way
00:12:03.860they're doing it in germany if you've been back to syria on a holiday and plenty have
00:12:09.960the CBC did a whole feature on it. Well, you've answered the question yourself. If you're going
00:12:14.260back to Syria for a holiday, you're not a refugee from Syria anymore. You're not in danger anymore.
00:12:18.400Now are you? Part two, a return package. We've done this before. From 2012 to 2015, Ottawa ran
00:12:25.360a program with the International Organization for Migration that paid for the flight and up to $2,000
00:12:30.960to get reestablished. Bring that back. Make it generous. Austria is paying 3,000 euros. That's
00:12:38.000like 5,000 Canadian dollars. A plane ticket and five grand is a lot cheaper than a lifetime of
00:12:44.560welfare in Mississauga or Montreal. Number three, stop the intake. Stop taking new Syrian refugee
00:12:51.860claims from a country we've just declared as normal. That's it. MERS has a target. Karner1.00
00:12:57.640has a checkbook. Trump has a deadline. Canada has a non-resident ambassador and nothing to say.
00:13:03.120You know, we did the humanitarian thing. We paid for it. The emergency's over. Syria needs its engineers and its doctors and its bricklayers to rebuild it, and its own president says so.
00:13:16.900So here's my question for you. If Syria is safe enough for Anita and Ann to lift the sanctions, why isn't it safe enough for the people who came from there and who have not fit in here?0.96
00:13:29.100Why isn't it safe enough for them to go back?1.00