Businesses stepping in to help Syrian refugees

But agencies overseas and in Canada are being forced to revamp what happens after that in the wake of the Liberal announcement of how the government intends to meet a promise to resettle 25,000 people. Immigration and Refugee Minister John McCallum announced on Tuesday during a news briefing that Canada will continue to bring in refugees through 2016.

The government is relying heavily on the United Nations agency to accomplish its goal of bringing in 25,000 more Syrian refugees to Canada before the end of February.

He said he did not want the refugees to be “a cause for anxiety or division”.

Businesses and entrepreneurs are stepping in to help settle the thousands of Syrian refugees coming to Canada over the next few weeks.

Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion said Canada has received a positive reaction from most of those countries, as well as requests to take more refugees.

International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, shown with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the cabinet minister swearing-in ceremony earlier this month, announced the added aid for the UN.

McCallum also explained the decision to exclude unaccompanied, heterosexual, single adult men from government sponsorship by saying single men were more likely to be a security risk and heterosexual men were less vulnerable to persecution than gay men.

“We’re not just welcoming 25,000 refugees”, he said.

“Over the last five years they have experienced conflict, they’ve been displaced from their homes, they have experienced loss as possibly family members and friends have been killed”, Philpott said in an interview with CBC News.

In his Thanksgiving message on Thursday, President Barack Obama – who has said he will veto the House bill if it reaches his desk – called for Americans to treat refugees as latter-day Pilgrims, in a reference to the first Americans who fled religious persecution to establish themselves in the new world. “In fact, this commitment is a powerful and ambitious approach to making Canada, and the world, a better, and safer, place”.

Government officials in the newly re-named Global Affairs Department acknowledged the vast worldwide funding shortcoming, but said Canada was doing its part because it was still among the top 10 worldwide donors.

But she said that resettlement involves some “very complex issues” which can include families receiving help with health and mental health concerns, post-traumatic stress disorder and making sure children are properly streamed into the educational system.