TRACKING REFUGEES

The Liberal government is struggling to track the impact of its historic effort to resettle upwards of 40,000 Syrian refugees. Markers like how many kids are in school or how many Syrians are on income assistance weren’t being measured between fall 2015 and the spring of this year, the period examined by the federal watchdog, raising questions about what happened to the population once they began to settle in Canada. “We were concerned about the department’s inability to track whether the Syrian refugees had access to basic provincial services, such as health care and education — especially considering that part of the department’s objective was to help Syrian refugees benefit from Canada’s social, medical, and economic systems,” the auditor general’s report said. “This audit is important because the Syrian refugee initiative will succeed in the long term only if the people it brought to Canada integrate into Canadian society,” the report said. It’s been almost two years since the Liberals launched the program they promised during the 2015 campaign — to bring 25,000 Syrians to Canada by the end of that year, at a cost of $250 million. The deadline was later bumped back and the budget exponentially bumped up — just over $950 million has been set aside. One major increase came in settlement funding. Originally, $141 million was set aside to cover four years, but that budget was boosted to $257 million over five years when it became clear the Syrians were arriving with higher-than-expected needs.