Juxtaposition

The Cons can't wait to lock up any refugee who might arrive in Canada on the wrong ship:

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney insists Canada’s new measures [including mandatory detention for every single passenger on a designated ship] will provide a strong deterrent to anyone thinking of paying a human smuggler to cross the Pacific...

Canada’s new law, C-31, requires mandatory detention for so-called “irregular arrivals” — to include arrivals by boat or cases where human smuggling is suspected. The detention will be reviewed after the first 14 days and then every six months. Previously, detention was reviewed every 30 days.

Asylum seekers will be detained until the Immigration and Refugee Board makes a decision on their claims or orders their release. That means people could be in detention for lengthy periods as their refugee claims move through the system.

The average processing time for claims is 18 months.

But they're more than prepared to look the other way when it comes to employers convicted of human trafficking:

Labour and business stakeholders say they're baffled by the Conservative government's recent removal of provisions from its Temporary Foreign Worker Program that would have barred criminal employers from participating.

In a notice on New Year's Day, the government said its original proposals aimed at employers convicted of human trafficking, sexually assaulting an employee or causing the death of a worker were "too rigid and cumbersome."

Because who wants to see our government deter employers from engaging in human trafficking when it can instead be used to detain the goods?

[Update: see more from Simon and Alison.]