Refugees sleeping in Toronto churches continue calls for government support

After spending days or weeks living in an emergency shelter at a Toronto church, dozens of asylum seekers and refugees want action from the provincial and federal government. 

On Thursday, asylum seekers who have been living at Pilgrim Feast Tabernacles in Etobicoke staged a protest outside Premier Doug Ford's constituency office at 823 Albion Road. Nadine Miller, a director with the church, says its been housing about 150 people and neglecting bills to pay for their food. 

While immigration policies are a federal responsibility, Miller and the church is calling on all levels of government to work together on a solution.

"We need them, from the local level in Ontario to the federal government, to sit down and come up with a way that the refugees that are sleeping in the churches can be moved, can be housed," she said. 

The church is one of multiple in the city that has stepped up to help asylum seekers who had been sleeping on city sidewalks outside a homeless support centre at 129 Peter Street downtown as the city and federal government went back and forth over shelter funding. On Friday, Mayor Olivia Chow said the city has provided three churches with $50,000 to help offset costs of housing refugees. 

Chow said the city is housing about 10,000 people in its shelter system, around 3,300 of them are newcomers.

"Half the people coming to shelters are refugees," Chow said. 

Ford also addressed the situation during a media availability on Friday. 

"I have people in my own riding, as you've heard, asylum seekers, new refugees, coming here [and] sleeping in church's basements, sleeping in an old TD Bank. That's unacceptable," Ford said. "We need to continue to build homes." 

Beatrice Wathira was one of the asylum seekers protesting outside Ford's office this week. She says she had to flee Kenya because her life was in danger. 

"I had been reading about Canada and I know it's a good country, where [the] government can take care of the person who is in need of being protected," said Wathira, who used to be employed operating heavy machinery on construction sites and hopes to do the same here.

A report published in June by CIBC deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal found there are at least 80,000 vacancies in the construction industry nationwide. But before Wathira could help fill one, she's calling on the government to help her find somewhere to live.

Miller is worried that the coming change in seasons will only make things worse. 

"Winter is coming. If these people are not acclimatized and educated and into homes right now, I believe that we will lose some of their lives," she said.