Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Chris Alexander

: Prime Minister Stephen Harper, responding Thursday to the recent tragedy, repeated a familiar government talking point — Canada has the most generous immigration and refugee system in the world, it admits per capita more people than any other and that his government has welcomed in total 2.5 million new arrivals, according to CBC. B.C. woman blames 'the whole world' for failing to help refugees after relatives drown Father describes desperate ordeal to save family Chris Alexander pauses his election campaign in wake of refugee crisis Harper is combining immigrants and refugees, however, two different classifications. Critics say that Canada has historically been able to act rapidly to accept refugees on an urgent basis, but is failing to do so during the current crisis in the Mideast. Canada does accept a lot of economic immigrants, around 165,000 last year. And the number of refugees granted status in Canada is down from over 35,000 in 2005 to roughly 23,000 in 2014. But refugees make up less than 10 per cent of the people accepted into Canada. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.