Ottawa will seek to settle more Syrians in French communities, says McCallum, Overall settlement challenges
2016/01/20 Leave a comment
Challenge has shifted to bring refugees here to settling them:
Immigration Minister John McCallum says the federal government is looking to settle newly arrived Syrian refugees in more French-speaking communities across the country.
McCallum says more than 90 per cent of refugees that have arrived in Canada speak neither English or French.
That creates what he calls a blank slate for refugees and provinces to teach newly arrived Syrians either of Canada’s two official languages.
McCallum says where refugees end up living will depend on which communities have the resources to resettle the 10,000 that have arrived since November — and 15,000 more that are scheduled to arrive by the end of February.
The Liberals promised during the election campaign to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of 2015.
Once in office, they changed that goal, citing the realities of moving all those people in a short period of time, including inclement weather that didn’t always make flights possible.
The last of the first 10,000 Syrians arrived about a week ago; McCallum says the government will “easily” hit its deadline of bringing a further 15,000 refugees into the country by the end of February.
“We can deliver one, two, three, four, even five flights per day so the challenge is no longer to get the refugees here,” McCallum said.
The new issue facing the government is to resettle those Syrians into Canadian communities, he added.
“The challenge today going forward is to receive them well, to help them find a place to live, a job, language training, all of those things and that involves working with provincial governments and municipalities on the settlement side.”
As Ottawa places thousands of Syrian refugees in hotels and shelters while they hunt for permanent housing, private sponsorship groups are clamouring for families to help.
The disconnect, say critics, is a disservice to the government-assisted families cramped inside the not-so-welcoming temporary accommodation and to the eager community volunteers who have raised the money and have everything ready to receive the newcomers for a new life in Canada.
“The sponsorship group I chair has been ready since mid-December, but there had been no offers. My group is one of 18 affiliated with the Rosedale United Church. No one is getting any referrals,” said former Toronto Mayor John Sewell.
“I suspect there are three or four hundred sponsorship groups in Toronto who are ready to take families, if the government will only refer them to these groups.”
On Tuesday, two cities — Vancouver and Ottawa — said they are halting their reception of government-assisted Syrian refugees as settlement agencies there try to work through housing bottlenecks.
Syrian refugees eligible for resettlement to Canada must first be vetted by the United Nations refugee agency before being referred to Canadian officials abroad and assigned to the three different streams: fully supported by the federal government, private sponsors and the blended class with responsibilities shared between the two.
The government gets the first dip into selecting the eligible refugees recommended by its visa posts and the leftovers are then put into a pool of profiles for the selection of the 100 faith and community groups that hold refugee sponsorship agreements with Ottawa.
Local sponsorship groups that were formed after the Liberal government launched the massive Syrian resettlement plan in November, must partner with the sponsorship agreement holders.
According to Brian Dyck, chair of the Sponsorship Agreement Holders’ Association, some 300 Syrian refugee profiles have been posted since the beginning of January and they were quickly snapped up by his members.
“The matching system was designed for small-scale sponsorship interest. To adapt it to the current public interest is a big challenge,” Dyck explained.
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