Quebec asks for federal help over asylum seekers

MONTREAL – The Quebec government says it is facing even more asylum-seekers entering the province from the United States this year and is asking the federal government for help. Immigration Minister David Heurtel says the number is forecast to increase significantly this summer.

He told a news conference Monday there have been 6,074 asylum-seekers so far this year, up from about 2,000 during the same period last year.

Heurtel says projections suggest there will be up to 400 crossings a day this summer, compared to 250 in 2017. Several senior Quebec ministers joined Heurtel to announce the province will soon reach its capacity for accommodating asylumseekers.

Last year, the influx of border crossers was linked to the end of a U.S. government program that granted Haitians so-called “temporary protected status” following the massive earthquake that struck their homeland in 2010.

Gunman’s web searches included Trump, Islamic centre QUEBEC – A search of the computer belonging to the Quebec City mosque gunman reveals he looked up web pages about guns, Donald Trump and mass shooters before he killed six men in January 2017. Alexandre Bissonnette also visited the website of the city’s main mosque numerous times as well as its Facebook page in the days leading up to the shootings. The Crown tabled a police report in court Monday during Bissonnette’s sentencing hearing, which detailed the websites he visited before he stormed the mosque on Jan. 29, 2017. Bissonnette, 28, pleaded guilty last month to six charges of first-degree murder and six of attempted murder in the shooting. The gunman searched the web for information on mass killers including white supremacist Dylan Roof as well as Marc Lepine, the shooter in Montreal’s 1989 Ecole Polytechnique massacre. On the day of the killings, Bissonnette also looked up a Twitter message written the previous day by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.