Two years ago this month, Canada made international headlines by announcing it would take in 25,000 refugees from Syria. Nightly newscasts soon featured Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other politicians welcoming Syrians who for years had been trying to escape their country that had been destroyed by civil war. But over the last year, there’s been a different refugee story playing out in Canada – one that many people believe is directly related to the immigration policies of U.S. President Donald Trump. Today in The Conversation Canada, we present two articles that look at Canada’s impending refugee crisis from two different perspectives.

Manavi Handa, an associate professor at Ryerson University’s Midwifery Education Program, has written about her personal experience in treating newcomers who don’t have access to health insurance. As a result, many women who are refugees give birth without proper pre-natal examinations, which can not only be hazardous the health of the mother and the child, but can end up putting more strain on the health care system. Prof. Handa says if refugees had access to care from midwifes, it would result in better care and lower costs.

In our second article, Petra Molnar, a lawyer with the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto, and postdoctoral research fellow Stephanie J Silverman write about their research into immigration detention centres. At least 16 people have died in these centres since 2000. They raise some crucial issues about the government’s handling of immigrants and refugees. “The mounting death toll leads us to ask: Do certain deaths matter less than others? And for that matter, are some lives more imprisonable than others?”

What constitutes an act of terror? It’s a question that has been around for decades and recent developments in the United States have rekindled the debate. Houssem Ben Lazreg of the University of Alberta notes that two recent mass shootings in the U.S. that killed more than 80 people were not considered terrorist acts. “Should terrorism always be politically motivated?” he asks.

And finally, faculty at Ontario’s colleges have been on strike for five weeks. As an adjunct professor at Queen’s University, Lisa Carver is not involved in the strike. But when Prof. Carver was a PhD student, she took on teaching assignments at a college and her personal tale of the long hours and relatively low wages gives some insight into the issues that have led to the longest job action in the history of the Ontario college system.

Regards,