Federal government offers $5M to help Toronto shelter asylum seekers at Exhibition Place

Canada's immigration minister says the federal government has offered $5 million to help the City of Toronto open the Better Living Centre at Exhibition Place to create spaces for asylum seekers this winter.

"No one should be left outside in dangerously cold weather," Miller said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday.

"We have offered $5M to partner with the City of Toronto to open the Better Living Centre at the Exhibition Place to create more safe spaces to keep people out of the cold. This option remains."

The offer follows a letter from Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow asking the federal government to open its armouries in the city for use as emergency shelters for asylum seekers as winter approaches.

In an email late Wednesday, however, the mayor's office says the offer from Miller is not good enough. It said it is already working to open the Better Living Centre, as part of its winter services plan, in the coming weeks.

"We need additional space for this crisis," Arianne Robinson, spokesperson for Chow, said in the email.

In the email, the mayor's office says the city requires $200 million for 2023 to cover the cost of sheltering about 4,000 refugees currently in the city's shelter system and $240 million for 2024.

Chow posted her letter to X, formerly Twitter, earlier on Wednesday, saying refugees occupied 3,900 spaces in the city's shelter system as of Nov. 13, with an additional 1,212 refugees supported outside of the system. The number is a 50 per cent increase from the number six months ago. 

Chow said the letter, addressed to two federal ministers, Defence Minister Bill Blair and Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan, was also submitted to the provincial government.

"The situation is dire," Chow says in the letter.

"The City of Toronto is formally requesting that the Fort York Armoury and Moss Park Armoury are urgently operationalized, resourced, and funded by the federal government to provide shelter for refugee claimants for the duration of the crisis."

Earlier on Wednesday, however, Miller said the armouries are "not an ideal place" to house asylum seekers who need shelter when they come to Toronto.

And before the federal government would consider opening the armouries, Miller said it would need to get a formal "request for assistance" from the Ontario government and the federal government has not yet received such a request.

Miller told reporters that the government has been looking at a number of options in the Greater Toronto Area, including Exhibition Place, to ease the pressure of asylum seekers on Toronto's shelter system. He said the other options, including Exhibition Place, would be a "more suitable" place for people to get shelter.