Canada to give United Nations $75m for Syrian refugee relief

The Liberal government unveiled some details of the plan to resettle refugees on Tuesday, pushing back the time frame for resettlement to the end of February, rather than the end of this year, and choosing to conduct all security screening overseas, before any of the refugees arrive in Canada.

In Canada on Thursday, Bibeau told reporters that the money would help the UN High Commissioner for Refugees provide shelter, protection, education and health to some of the millions affected by the Syrian civil war.

“Through the rest of 2016, we will bring in more … government-assisted refugees to make up the difference, so that we will have reached the number 25,000 and thereby kept our promise”, he said.

The Liberal platform said it would “expand Canada’s intake of refugees from Syria by 25,000 through immediate government sponsorship”.

Tunis disputed reports that single men would be excluded, citing a technical briefing from David Manicom, the assistant deputy minister with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

“Not all of them yet have exit visas from Lebanon, and we are working really, really hard to expedite that so they can get those exit visas as soon as possible”, McCallum said an interview with Chris Hall, host of CBC Radio’s The House.

The government also announced it is honouring a commitment made by the previous Conservative government to match donations by Canadians to the global relief efforts.

We have talked about this amongst our friends and neighbours and the majority feel as we do, that bringing to Canada 25,000 Syrian refugees is wrong and has the distinct possibility of putting our country in an even greater danger than at present.

“We are not accepting refugees, we are welcoming new Canadians”.

“For Canada it would be about 11 million refugees – 11 million refugees!”

It said McCallum said likely the first group will travel to Canada on a Canadian Air Force plane and the government will also look into the option of leased planes thereafter, but that logistics are still being finalized.

“This funding to UNHCR will help to make these decisions a little less hard by helping to meet basic needs”.

The government is also giving the United Nations in those countries, as well as in Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Europe, money to help deal more broadly with the effect of the refugee crisis in those countries.

Bibeau said that since the Syrian crisis began, Canada had committed more than C$969m in funds for humanitarian assistance, development projects and security and stability initiatives.