Triage system for asylum seekers won’t be in place until September
OTTAWA A long-promised triage system aimed at redirecting irregular border crossers from crowded shelters in Montreal and Toronto will not be in place until as late as the end of September.
The federal government said it’s working with individual municipalities across Ontario and must identify available housing capacity before it can roll out its triage program.
Ottawa announced the so-called triage system in April following concerns raised by Quebec over an influx of asylum seekers flooding temporary facilities in Montreal.
Since then, Toronto has also seen a spike in refugee hopefuls converging on its homeless shelters and college dormitories. Both Quebec and Toronto have called on the feds for help.
Ottawa’s response was the promised triage system, which would identify asylum seekers interested in settling in areas outside Montreal or Toronto to await the outcome of their refugee claims.
But the system has not materialized and Ottawa said it is still working on it. In May, the government said it was delayed due to the Ontario provincial election. Now, Ottawa has said the new Doug Ford administration is not playing ball, so it has to go to municipalities to find shelter options.
While this is being worked out, Ottawa is paying to house about 500 asylum seekers in hotels in the Toronto suburbs of Mississauga, Etobicoke and Markham as the college dorms in Toronto currently housing them must be vacated by Aug. 9.
The contract with these hotels extends until Sept. 30. That’s when the feds hope to be able to roll out their triage system — five months after it was announced.
“Our plan is to have a triage system in place by (Sept. 30) to allow us to better manage the flow of asylum seekers to different municipalities,” said Mathieu Genest, press secretary for Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen.
The City of Toronto is co-ordinating the outreach to municipalities in Ontario to identify areas where housing capacity exists. The city is working closely with the federal government to secure accommodation for the approximately 3,053 refugees and asylum seekers living in the city, Toronto spokeswoman Daniela Magisano said Wednesday.
Earlier this month, Toronto Mayor John Tory convened an urgent call with mayors from other large cities in Ontario, asking them to identify any sites or facilities that could be repurposed as temporary housing, as well as connections to employers for job opportunities.
Mayors responded positively to Toronto’s call for help, including Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti.
But not everyone in Markham is ready to welcome the refugees.
A protest on the weekend denounced any plan to house “illegal border crossers” in the community. The demonstration came to fisticuffs, with some protesters waving signs saying, “Markham say no to illegal border crossers,” and “Protect our city, protect our home,” while counter-protesters fought them with their own signs and chants of “Refugees are welcome here.”
Scarpitti said he believes the protest was organized by candidates running against him in the upcoming municipal elections and said rumours of 5,000 asylum seekers coming to Markham are false.
The mayor went out of his way to stress that while he believes in welcoming refugees and wants to help Toronto with its housing crunch, he is not “throwing the doors wide open” to asylum seekers.
NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said she believes the backlash against irregular migrants is a result of tensions caused by a lack of forward planning and leadership from the federal government.
“It also doesn’t help when you have politicians misrepresenting the situation. Calling asylum seekers ‘illegals’ — that really exasperates the situation and creates the negative sentiments and dehumanizes asylum seekers,” she said, noting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Hussen have referred at times to irregular migration as “illegal.”
OTTAWA • The majority of Canadians believe irregular migration into the country has reached a crisis point, according to a new poll, suggesting immigration and refugees will be a major wedge issue in the 2019 election.
The survey comes as departmental estimates prepared for Canada’s budget watchdog show the federal government spent more than $85 million dealing with the influx of irregular asylum seekers during the last fiscal year, and faces a much larger bill this year as provinces call on Ottawa to cover their costs as well.
Submissions to the parliamentary budget officer, made as part of an analysis of the cost of irregular asylum seekers requested by the Conservatives in June, also show that some wouldbe refugees are now using “anchor relatives” recently arrived in Canada to enter the country through official ports of entry without being turned back by the Safe Third Country Agreement.
According to the new survey from the Angus Reid Institute, two thirds of respondents believe that Canada has taken in too many irregular asylum claimants for authorities to manage, including majorities of Conservative, Liberal and NDP voters. The results also show that nearly half of respondents overestimate the number of irregular border crossers Canada has received.
The findings suggest “that asylum seekers and border security are areas of vulnerability for the Liberal Party,” according to the pollster. Recent survey results from Abacus Data also found that among voters who want a change in government, immigration and refugees ranked as the second reason they’re dissatisfied, behind deficits and debt.
According to the RCMP, 11,420 asylum seekers have entered Canada between official border crossings from Jan. 1 to July 15, 2018. Last year, there were 20,953 irregular crossings in total, up from just 2,486 in 2016. The vast majority have entered at an unofficial crossing point in Quebec.
In total, the immigration department, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), the RCMP and the Immigration and Refugee Board have estimated in submissions to the budget watchdog that they spent $85.5 million in 2017-18 to respond to the rapid increase in irregular border crossers. Costs include salary and travel expenses, as well as health coverage for the asylum seekers.
That total will likely increase substantially this year — the immigration department alone is anticipating costs of close to $100 million, including $50 million Ottawa has promised for Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba to help cover housing expenses for would-be refugees.
The influx of asylum claimants entering the country between official ports of entry is largely due to a loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement, which requires that would-be refugees in Canada and the United States make a refugee claim in whichever country they get to first. The agreement allows Canada to turn away asylum seekers from land border crossings, but not if they cross between official entry points.
However, the CBSA says some irregular asylum seekers are now acting as “anchor relatives” for family members once they enter the country, using another exemption to the Safe Third Country Agreement that allows those who have family members in Canada to claim asylum at official border crossings. “This means that these family members can present themselves at a port of entry and not be considered as irregular migrants,” the agency says in its submission to the budget watchdog. “Also they can’t be refused entry under the Safe Third Country Agreement.”