Is there a better place for refugees than hotels?
Canadian Council for Refugees proposes reception centres in major cities to triage arrivals
Asylum seekers are sleeping on the pavement in downtown Toronto. An encampment spreads outside a homeless shelter in Mississauga. A church in Vaughan is building tiny homes on its Greenbelt property.
These are some of the messy consequences of the surging number of asylum seekers who are coming to Canada and landing in the GTA. And it reflects what happens when all levels of governments lack a coordinated game plan and fail to invest in existing infrastructure to accommodate a surging displaced population around the world, advocates for refugees warn.
The Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR) is urging the federal government to address critical gaps in the reception and support of asylum seekers by establishing a national system that replicates the one that currently supports resettled refugees such as those from Ukraine.
“We know in today’s global context that Canada will continue to receive people who are seeking protection from persecution,” Gauri Sreenivasan, the council’s co-executive director, told a news conference in Ottawa on Thursday.
“Canadians are expecting a plan, not stopgap measures, and it is long past time to put in place a comprehensive, co-ordinated, cost-effective system that treats refugee claimants with dignity and fairness.”
Canada received 137,947 new asylum claims in 2023 — up from 60,158 the year before — and many have been caught up in the country’s affordable housing crisis, despite efforts by the federal government to redirect new arrivals from big cities to smaller communities. Ottawa has also invested another $362 million to house asylum seekers this year, in addition to $212 million announced last summer.
“We will continue to be there to support vulnerable people and the communities that provide them shelter,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller told reporters in January when announcing the new money.
But there are cheaper ways to serve those needs with better planning and co-ordination, advocates say.
The national plan, they said, should start with building new reception centres in cities with large numbers of claimants to triage new arrivals and refer them to co-ordinated services among provincial and municipal governments and civil society.
A network of 35 shelters across Canada already offers emergency short-term and transitional housing for refugee claimants and various services. Some diaspora community organizations and faith groups have also chipped in to provide shelter and social supports to asylum seekers, who are not eligible for federally funded settlement services.
Scaling up the long-term funding of these programs could go a long way for asylum seekers, three-quarters of whom were granted protection in Canada last year, advocates say.
“These programs operate at a fraction of the costs of hotels and homeless shelters,” said Allan Reesor-McDowell, executive director of Matthew House Ottawa, which provides settlement support for refugees.
“Where I work, the average cost per bed is less than $35 a day. The programs like ours often respond far better to the needs of refugee claimants, who are newly arrived. These programs typically provide food, connections to a lawyer, getting help with a work permit and finding a job. Perhaps most importantly, they provide community support that is critical to well-being and mental health.”
Loly Rico, founder of Toronto’s FCJ Refugee Centre, said there’s a precedent for Canada to extend settlement services to people fleeing wars and arriving in Canada for temporary refuge as in the case of the displaced people from Ukraine; all Ukrainians and their families have been granted free access to settlement services until next March.
“What we are asking is to have wraparound services because in that way we won’t see situations that they end up homeless, or they end up on the street, or even to lose their life,” said Rico, referring to the recent deaths of two homeless refugee claimants awaiting shelter beds.
The refugee council said the federal government must also ensure adequate legal aid coverage for refugee claimants in all parts of the country through consistent multiyear funding as New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island currently do not fund legal assistance to claimants.
Streamlining the asylum application and determination process would also help eliminate the backlog and delays that put claimants’ lives on hold, the council added.
The Immigration Department said the asylum system is very different from the refugee resettlement program because the screening and determination of the claims only start when the person is in Canada.
The federal government has invested in interim housing and health care for claimants even though provinces and municipalities are responsible for social services, including social assistance, education, housing, health care and legal aid to asylum seekers.