Federal government pledges more money to help with refugee housing crisis
CBC
The federal government is allocating more money to help house a rising number of asylum seekers in Canada.
Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marc Miller announced on Wednesday that more than $362 million is being allocated to the provinces and cities struggling to cope with a rising number of refugee claimants.
The money falls under the federal government's Interim Housing Assistance Program. Miller said $100 million of the new money will be earmarked for the province of Quebec.
"This program is important because it gets shelters over people's heads, particularly with the temperature that it is outside. But it needs reform, and that's something that will have to be worked on ... in the coming months," he said.
"I think we owe it to Canadians to reform a system that has very much been a stopgap measure since 2017 to deal with large historic flows of migration."
He said more details of how the funding will be allocated will be revealed in the coming days
The new funding comes after premiers and mayors called for more federal help.
Quebec Premier François Legault wrote a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier this month saying the growing number of asylum seekers was pushing government services to their breaking point.
He asked the federal government to slow the flow of asylum seekers and to cover the cost of providing services to those already in Quebec.
Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette said Wednesday's announcement was a "first step," but she called on Ottawa for more funding and to make changes to the immigration system.
"We expect the federal government not only to reimburse us for the entire $470 million, but also to change the way it manages visas to reduce the flow of asylum seekers," she said.
Paul Calandra, Ontario's minister of municipal affairs and housing, echoed Fréchette's concerns.
It "doesn't cover the needs of Toronto, let alone all the other municipalities facing the same pressures due to the increased numbers of asylum claimants," he said in a joint statement with Ontario Immigration Minister David Piccini.
"The federal government needs to take responsibility for the crisis it created and provide the necessary funding to address it."