A 40-day plan to bring in 25,000 refugees
Strategy is likely to include military and private firms that can house newcomers
OTTAWA— The federal government on Tuesday will unveil the broad strokes of the plan to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees, Immigration and Refugees Minister John McCallum says. That will leave just 40 days for the Liberals to carry out their plan.
“I can tell you we’re working extremely actively out there in the field,” McCallum told reporters Friday. “Additional officials have been deployed and there is a sense of extreme urgency on both the health and security front overseas. So obviously, we’re going to bring these people in as soon as we possibly can.”
All other questions about logistics, however, McCallum put off until next Tuesday, after the full cabinet meets to approve the plan. The government has promised to have the refugees in Canada by year’s end.
A rough sketch of the Liberals’ efforts to make that happen began to appear this week. The government is putting out feelers to private companies that are capable of housing large numbers of people — between 500 and 3,000 — on self-contained sites.
At the same time, the military is working to winterize some of its housing on bases in Ontario and Quebec, where most of the refugees are expected to land. Based on government documents released this week, the refugees could be housed for as long as three months in temporary housing.
And simple arithmetic dictates that if the Liberals want to make good on their pledge, they’re going to need to close to 1,000 refugees a day in December.
The federal government appears to have willing partners in most of the provincial governments, including the Liberal administrations at Queen’s Park and Quebec City.
Speaking at the Canada 2020 conference in Ottawa on Friday, Premier Kathleen Wynne allowed that governments need to take necessary precautions when it comes to security screening, but said those concerns must not overshadow the ultimate goal. “We have had security measures before and we will absolutely have those in place and do them in place, but what we can’t give into, I think, is allowing (them) to mask racism,” Wynne said. “That’s the danger and somehow talking about security allows us to tap into that racist vein when that isn’t who we are.”
Wynne said she visited a Muslim woman in her riding on Thursday who had been attacked and robbed outside her kids’ school.
“She said, ‘I am home. This is where I live,’ ” Wynne said.
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard downplayed the stress of accommodating an increased number of refugees in a short period of time.
“It’s not such a difficult target to add 2,000 to a 50,000 immigration crowd coming into Quebec and it should not be seen as such a big issue as it is,” Couillard said, urging Canada’s politicians to show leadership on the file.
“We are not a society that different from other societies. We are not better or worse. We have our own characteristics, so we have those two devils within our society: racism and xenophobia. They exist . . . It is the responsibility of political leaders not to feed the fire.” With files from Joanna Smith