Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Personally Welcomes Syrian Refugees To Toronto

The child had relatives in Canada, and the refugee crisis became a major campaign issue.

A Canadian military plane just brought 163 Syrians to Toronto from a refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon.

Trudeau greeted some of the families to come through processing.

“We really would like to thank you for all this hospitality and the warm welcome”, the father said to Trudeau through an interpreter. “We felt ourselves at home”. Trudeau replied “you are home-welcome home”. “Now, we feel as if we got out of hell and we came to paradise”, Mr Jamkossian said later.

Incredible to welcome refugees to their new home in Canada tonight. 54 percent of Canadians said they were against the government resettling Syrian refugees, while 42 percent said they support the plan. They landed at Pearson International Airport, where they went through a special terminal set up for their welcome.

Another plane of Syrian refugees is expected to arrive in Montreal on Friday. Even before the conflict, Canada has been opening its doors to asylum seekers.

In the meantime, Canada welcomed its first arrival of Syrian refugees yesterday, reports the BBC. In the past, during the 1990s, over 5000 people were airlifted to the country from Kosovo, another 5000 in 1972 from Uganda and 60,000 in 1979-80 from Vietnam.

“Canada’s programmes are an expression of support to Syrian refugees but importantly for us they are a demonstration too of solidarity to countries in the region hosting more than 4 million Syrian refugees”, United Nations refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards told a news briefing in Geneva.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, second from right, and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, left, look over winter clothing which will be handed out to arriving Syrian refugees before arrival at Pearson International airport, in Toronto, on Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015.

Their first full day in their new country will end on a typically Canadian note: a Raptors game in Toronto, added Youssef. The public was actually warned to stay away from the Toronto airport, as officials feared the overwhelming rush of kindhearted people who wanted to greet the refugees with open arms.