“Some 16.2 million people were freshly displaced last year, among them families forced to flee for the first time, as well as those who had been previously displaced.”

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — I saw some people here chuckling over US President Donald Trump’s latest tirade against Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with threats of tariffs on Canadian-made cars, framing it as possible retaliation for Canada’s dairy tariffs.

It was among Trump’s latest as British Columbia joined the celebration of the 151st Canada Day yesterday (July 1) with fireworks bigger and louder than Trump’s attack on their leader. It was part of his ramblings — as is his wont — and criticism of three late-night television hosts, musings on his hair, a denial of his wife’s facelift and his calling the news media “the enemy of the people.”

“Justin, what’s your problem, Justin?” And there was something in Trump’s speech that somehow ribbed Canadians and the world now seeing the American leader as some kind of a joke, making a crack against the Canadian PM, in times when jokes are viewed with languor given the problems the world now faces.

Trump seems lost in these jokes, too, as Americans are divided on the issue of family separation, particularly children being separated from their parents with Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy.

A ‘’petty quarrel’’ between Trump and Trudeau could not be bigger than their problems, some Canadians, including Filipino-Canadians our pack had met here, say.

But while Trump now gets the blame, the US has a long history of separating children from their parents. This is now a new thing for the Americans, really.

Past US government policies has forced apart the families of enslaved Africans, Native Americans and Mexican immigrants, and detained Japanese-Americans during World War II. So, it’s not new, even Trump would say.

But as the globe observed the World Refugee Day last June 20, even this side of the world is concerned about things more serious than, say, Trump’s hair and Melania’s facelift.

Canada, for one, is being watched for its actions on immigrants and refugees.

Irish, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Sri Lankans, Vietnamese, Somalis and others from across the globe have come to Canada as refugees, in search of better lives.

Their contributions to social and economic development have been so substantial that it is hard to imagine a Canada without them, people here say.

Our hosts, Filipino-Canadian families, have made Canada their home for more than a decade now and they have no complaints. They have enjoyed the benefits of Canada’s welcoming arms to immigrants like them.

My Filipino-American friends just across the border could not say the same about their leader, though.

Canada resettled over 40,000 Syrian refugees in 2015-16. The resettlement target for privately sponsored refugees remains higher than previous levels, but resettlement target for government-assisted refugees in 2017 is below the annual average in the 1980s.

Canadians feel there is more to be done about this as 88 per cent of refugees are hosted in low- to middle-income countries with resources stretched thin and service delivery systems admittedly weak.

This stands in stark contrast to high-income countries into which the United Nations Refugee Agency resettled only 1 per cent of the world’s refugee population in 2015.

But there is now a record 68.5 million people forced to flee their homes due to war, violence and persecution, including those from Myanmar and Syria, the UN said recently, in observing the World Refugee Day.

The figure is nearly three million higher than the previous year and double from the 42.7 million uprooted from their homes a decade ago. Around 70 percent of this number are people from just 10 countries.

Some 16.2 million people were freshly displaced last year, among them families forced to flee for the first time, as well as those who had been previously displaced.

When Trump asked Trudeau what his problem was, maybe he should have asked himself the same. Besides, the US is not innocent of the causes of these problems too.