A day after the federal government announced nearly $100 million to provide shelter for refugees sleeping on the streets of Toronto, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and newly elected Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow jointly urged Ottawa to take further action.
“That’s why we are calling on the federal government to build on its stop-gap funding by fully funding the supports needed to shelter and care for those refugees and asylum seekers in the city.”
For weeks, around 200 refugees and asylum seekers have been camping out on the sidewalk outside a shelter in Toronto as the city’s shelter system struggles to cope with a 500 percent increase in the number of asylum seekers within the last 20 months. Ms. Chow and Mr. Ford said all levels of government would need to cooperate to find solutions to the issue.
On July 18, the federal government announced it would be providing an additional $210 million to fund interim housing for asylum seekers and refugees across Canada, with $97 million of it to be allocated to Toronto. Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said their modeling showed the money would “more than cover the cost” of interim housing for the refugees.
Ms. Chow and Mr. Ford said Toronto and the province of Ontario will each add a one-time $6.67-million top-up to a rent subsidy program to help move more people into permanent housing and to free up space in the city’s homeless shelters. They added that the federal government has historically contributed two-thirds of the cost to the program and called on it to provide an extra $26.7 million in funding.
Calls for More Housing
On July 18, New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh also called for the housing minister to do more to support the asylum seekers, arguing that the government had not fulfilled its promises to provide “adequate supports for people.”“While the minister has now made another promise, we want to see that promise actually delivered. We want to see the funds actually flow so that people are not ending up on the streets, so that people are actually given the support they need so they can build that life and they can contribute back to Canada,” he said.
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre said during a press conference on July 19 that Canada needed to make it easier to build more homes, or it would have a “big problem” with homelessness.
“We’re seeing it not just with the house prices that Canadians are paying, but for the first time I can remember, refugees are arriving and the government is saying right to their faces, ‘please go live on the streets because we have no space for you,’” he said.
“We’ve got to speed up and lower the cost of building permits, we have to increase building annually by a multiple of two or three ... if we’re going to have these levels of immigration,” Mr. Poilievre added. “Or the scenes that you’re witnessing right now on the streets of Toronto are going to be everywhere in Canada within three or four years.”
