This refugee family found safety in Windsor. It took months longer than they expected

After eight years of fleeing war and conflict in the middle east, Zakareia Sedi finally got the call that his family would be accepted as refugees in Canada — but their arrival was delayed for more than a year due to COVID-19. 

"Getting to Canada, in my opinion, is winning the lottery," Sedi said through a translator. 

"After all this waiting, when we received the news that we can go to Canada, we were so happy. I was feeling that I'm going to settle, be safe ... not fearing tomorrow." 

A year and a half after getting accepted, Sedi, his wife Rudin Khalil and their two children, Hassan and Salahaldeen, finally arrived in Windsor. 

And while they managed to eventually resettle, there are others who are still waiting. 

The Sedis are some of a few hundred refugees who arrived in the Windsor area as of October this year. But since the pandemic, the region has welcomed far fewer than usual. 

Data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) shows that while 895 refugees arrived to the region in 2019 alone, only 675 have arrived since then. 

And this drop isn't just happening in Windsor. A CBC News exclusive found that by the end of October Canada was only about halfway to its goal of welcoming 81,000 refugees by the end of 2021. 

"It was quite a dramatic drop that we saw during the pandemic," said Southwestern Ontario YMCA's VP of newcomer and community services Jacquie Rumiel about the number of newcomer clients they serviced. 

Despite this, she says they weren't any less busy because of what she calls the "digital divide" that the pandemic created. 

Many of the YMCA's clients, Rumiel said, needed help navigating the online world that everyone pivoted to when the pandemic hit. 

"Suddenly with all community agencies pretty much transferring services online, so many newcomers were left behind," she said.