The Harper government wanted Garcia Rodriguez to go blind. But Toronto surgeon David Wong had higher standards—something about the Hippocratic Oath, I suspect, as well as a healthy dose of human decency, a quality utterly lacking in Jason Kenney’s Department of Citizenship and Immigration.

Daniel Garcia Rodriguez would have permanently lost his vision from a chronic retinal detachment if it wasn’t for a Toronto surgeon who defied Ottawa’s order not to operate on the Aurora man’s eye.

Garcia Rodriguez was almost certain to go blind, after Ottawa terminated the interim federal health coverage of the Colombian refugee and many others like him as of June 30.

Repeated pleas by Dr. David Wong, an eye surgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital, for an exemption for Garcia Rodriguez had fallen on deaf ears at Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

On Monday, out of desperation to save the man’s deteriorating vision, Wong went ahead with the surgery. The bulk of the $10,000 cost will be absorbed by his own practice and the fiscally-strapped hospital.

Rodriguez and his spouse are fleeing paramilitaries in Colombia. Questions should be asked of the Immigration and Refugee Board that, bizarrely, approved his wife as a refugee but rejected his own claim in a joint hearing.

In the meantime, Wong has given us all an object lesson about the true meaning of citizenship—such a good one, in fact, that it should rightfully be included in Kenney’s Canadian Citizenship Guide.

[H/t]