Toronto joins Vancouver, Ottawa in asking for break in receiving refugees

Some major cities have asked the federal Immigration Department to hold off sending more Syrian refugees their way until they can find places to house them.

Refugee-placement agencies in Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa have had difficulty coping with the large number of Syrians escaping civil war and terrorism in their own country and have asked the government to give them a few days to deal with the surge before sending more people.

Refugees that are sponsored by groups of Canadians or by private organizations arrive in this country to housing that has been provided for them, so they are not affected by the request.

But the agencies that are receiving government-assisted refugees in the three big cities are having troubles, both with staffing shortages and especially with finding those people suitable permanent housing, in some cases because the family sizes have been much larger than anticipated. That has left the temporary housing filled to capacity.

“We have received requests to slow down arrivals in some communities. We are accommodating those requests to ensure that, in the end, the refugees are well taken care of,” spokesmen for the Immigration Department said late Tuesday in an e-mail after failing to respond to questions about the problems facing the cities for nearly 12 hours.

The Liberals are promising to bring 25,000 Syrians to Canada by the end of the year and 10,000 by the end of February.

It is unclear how the slowdown will affect the government’s plans to bring such a large number of people to Canada in a short span of time. It is also unclear when and if the government will start moving refugees to the military bases that have been prepared to provide shelter on a short-term basis.

“At the present time, four communities, Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto and Halifax, have asked us to delay new arrivals for a few days,” the department e-mail said. “In these cases, refugees who arrive in Canada destined to these areas can remain in hotels in Toronto/Montreal for a few extra days before they travel on to their final destination. At most, new arrivals in these situations are being delayed up to five days.”

However, the other cities are having troubles. They are among the 36 municipalities where the refugees are being sent because they have long-standing refugee-resettlement centres.

Despite this problem, the Syrian refugees continue to arrive daily in other cities across Canada, the Immigration Department said.

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