Canada has reached 10 per cent of refugee goal

Ottawa was to make room for 10,000, but only 1,000 are here, most privately funded

OTTAWA— Canada has accepted just over 1,000 refugees from Syria toward its goal, pledged in January, of taking in10,000, federal figures show.

But the vast majority of those, 857, have been privately sponsored refugees dependent on the financial support of churches, families and community organizations to start their new life in Canada.

There have been 188 governmentassisted refugees accepted towards the 10,000 goal, immigration department figures show.

Immigration Minister Chris Alexander announced in January that Canada would take in an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees and 3,000 Iraqi refugees over the next three years.

That’s in addition to 1,300 Syrian refugees already settled under a pledge made in 2013.

On the election trail last month, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper said that a re-elected Conservative government would accept a further 10,000 refugees from Iraq and Syria over the next four years, on top of the previous commitments.

But on Thursday, the Canadian Council for Refugees appealed to the federal government to immediately accept a minimum of 10,000 Syrians, all of them government assisted.

The appeal came after the heartrending photo of a small boy, his body washed up on a Turkish shoreline, focused the election spotlight on the refugee crisis unfolding in the Middle East and spilling over into Europe.

“We shouldn’t need to wait for a tragedy like this to realize we must open our doors,” Canadian Council for Refugees president Loly Rico said in a statement.

“We call on an urgent basis for Syrians with family in Canada to be allowed to travel here immediately and complete processing in Canada where they can be safe. We don’t want to see any more children die in this way,” Rico said.

The council appealed for other changes, too, to help speed the arrival of refugees on Canadian shores, such as eliminating barriers to the private sponsorship of refugees.

Harper saw first-hand the human toll and tragedy of the Syrian conflict during a visit to the sprawling Zaatari refugee camp in northern Jordan that is home to some 80,000 residents on the run.

The camp’s shops and stores and infrastructure are a sobering statement of how entrenched its residents have become, with little prospect of returning home or moving on to somewhere more permanent.

During his January 2014 visit, Harper pledged an additional $150 million in humanitarian assistance.