War Resisters Support Campaign and Trudeau

prime minister Stephen Harper: He did not elaborate, according to Guelph Mercury. Outside the transit yard where Trudeau was speaking, a handful of protesters from the War Resisters Support Campaign quietly held up a banner and signs calling on the government to let them stay. Trudeau, however, gave no commitments that Ottawa might smooth the path to permanent residency for the conscientious objectors, some of whom have been forced to return to the U.S. to face prison terms, but said the issue was a live one. "It one that we are looking into actively as a government," Trudeau said after a transit-funding announcement in Toronto. Last summer, a campaigning Trudeau criticized the Conservative government under prime minister Stephen Harper for acting in a way he called "lacking compassion and lacking understanding" when it came to the American soldiers. "I am supportive of the principle of allowing conscientious objectors to stay," Trudeau said at the time. In an email to The Canadian Press last month, a spokesman for Immigration Minister John McCallum said he had "no indication that a decision was made or is about to be made" on the issue. He called it "problematic" and "disappointing" and unworthy of Canada that Conservative MPs had cheered in the Commons in 2012 amid word that one of the Americans, a mother of four, had been arrested after deportation to the U.S., where she was later court-martialled and gave birth in prison. "I am committed...to restoring our sense of compassion and openness and a place that is a safe haven for people to come here." However, little appears to have happened since the Liberals took office last fall. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.