Initially, Canada received lukewarm response from refugees: officials

OTTAWA — Only a fraction of the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees whom the United Nations tried to contact over the past month said they were interested in coming to Canada by the end of the year, federal immigration officials said Wednesday.

While the low response rate raises questions about the refugees, officials remain confident about the Liberal government’s plan to resettle 25,000 Syrians by the end of February.

The officials’ comments came during an off-the-record briefing, the first of what the government says will be a weekly occurrence designed to ensure Canadians are kept up to date on the progress of its refugee plan.

Officials, who cannot be identified by name, said there had been early progress. Since the Liberal government was sworn in and the clock started ticking on its refugee promise on Nov. 3, 271 Syrians have arrived in Canada. Of those, 208 were privately sponsored, and the remainder had some government involvement.

A further 1,015 Syrian refugees were approved to come to Canada but hadn’t yet arrived, while more than 9,000 applications were being processed. Officials acknowledged that the majority of those applications had been submitted weeks earlier.

But it was the next bit of information that stood out as a challenge. Officials said the UN had sent more than 41,000 text messages to potential applicants to see if they were interested in coming to Canada. These refugees would have been identified as being among the most vulnerable.

It turned out that only about 28,000 of those phone numbers worked. Even then, only 3,049 agreed to meet with UN officials for an interview. Of those, only 1,801 — or under five per cent of those the UN initially tried to contact — said they were interested in coming to Canada by the end of the year.

Immigration officials suggested part of the reason for the seemingly lukewarm response was because many of the refugees were not prepared to move so quickly, and that the response rate had started to increase as prospective refugees were given until the end of February to make the move.

The Liberal government has said that of the 25,000 Syrians due to arrive by Feb. 29, about 15,000 will end up being identified by the UN as being among the most vulnerable and then sponsored by the government.

Officials said despite the low numbers, they are confident the target would be met.

The immigration officials also said they did not know exactly when the first chartered flight carrying hundreds of Syrian refugees would take off from the Middle East and fly to Canada. Documents published on a government website had suggested Dec. 10, but the officials said that was not set in stone.

The government expects about 9,000 Syrian refugees to take a flight here by Dec. 31. That would average out to more than 400 refugees arriving in Montreal and Toronto every day, if the first flight takes off on Dec. 10.

A handful of refugee applications had been rejected, but none were turned down for security reasons.