so long as we've got homeless refugees everywhere, and low income canadians feeling the pressures from it, the government just comes off as incompetent - but the kind of people likely to get galvanized by this are conservatives, anyways. online polling is only ever able to be useful by coincidence, but if you're going to pull anything out of it, that's the message - this is red meat for the rural conservative base, which the conservatives needs to get beyond to win elections.

but, if the liberals can frame the issue as a choice between spending tax money helping people and sending them away - and then actually build the necessary housing - then they're going to win the argument.

we don't imagine that taking in refugees means putting them in dorm rooms and then letting them loose on the free market; if that's what we're doing, we're mismanaging something. we imagine that taking in refugees is a process overseen and planned by a centralized body, and that success means finding them good housing and giving them the resources they need to thrive.

so, the government needs to make a choice: close the borders, or pony up and do it right. canadians will support the expenditure, but we want to see better results.