Chris Alexander

basic principle: The basic principle was to focus on the most vulnerable, but additional priorities had to be applied, Alexander said. Chris Alexander speaks about Canada refugee plan at a September event. "To determine who was the most needy, who is the most vulnerable among four million people, you need to set some priorities," he said. "And that what the Syria core group has done from the beginning and that what Canada operation to resettle Syrian refugees has striven to do." Alexander, who lost his Toronto-area seat in last fall election, was at the helm of the Immigration portfolio when the Conservatives announced last January they would increase the number of refugees accepted by Canada from 1,300 to 10,000, according to Huffington Post Canada. But they also announced they would concentrate on bringing in members of religious and ethnic minorities, prompting accusations of an anti-Muslim bias and charges that the government was violating UN rules. Every country working with the United Nations refugee agency on the humanitarian crisis in Syria operated under agreed-upon criteria for how to decide which refugees they'd accept, Alexander said in an interview with The Canadian Press. Most religious minorities in the region are from Christian groups. Alexander said religion and ethnic status were not the sole area of focus and that they were working from a set of principles agreed upon by resettlement states. The UN also specifically asks countries not to use religion as a factor in determining who to take in. "To determine who was the most needy, who is the most vulnerable among four million people, you need to set some priorities." How exactly the Conservatives applied their approach was made clear this week via documents tabled in the House of Commons in response to a question from the NDP. In them, the Immigration department said visa officers working in Lebanon and Jordan pulled cases that met the "areas of focus" criteria and processed those on a priority basis, while others were processed on regular timelines. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.