Feds may consider forgiving flight costs for all Syrian refugees: McCallum

Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported Monday that two cities, Vancouver and Ottawa, are not accepting any more Syrian refugees until Friday.

A spokesperson for the Immigration Department said the size of the refugee resettlement operations brings challenges and the department is working with communities buckling under the strain.

The last of the first 10,000 Syrians arrived about a week ago; McCallum says the government will “easily” hit its deadline of bringing a further 15,000 refugees into the country by the end of February.

That means refugees who were bound for Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa will now remain in hotels for a few extra days once their flights land in Canada.

Privately sponsored refugees’ needs are covered by their sponsors, but government-assisted refugees are taken care of by settlement groups which have agreements with the federal government.

“There are many, many places in Canada that are crying out for refugees”. The only Syrians arriving there as part of the Liberals’ Syrian program are those whose costs are split between the government and private sponsors, as well as those coming thanks to private sponsors alone.

“Everybody is trying their best to accommodate them. if there was a little bit of a break in-between that would be nice so we can help them and service them appropriately and find units for them as soon as possible so they can start their lives”, said Fariq Faqiri, with RFFSA.

The executive director of the Catholic Centre for Immigrants, Carl Nicholson, was not available to comment.

But the agencies that are receiving government-assisted refugees in the three big cities are having troubles, both with staffing shortages and especially with finding those people suitable permanent housing, in some cases because the family sizes have been much larger than anticipated.

Immigration minister John McCallum says the request comes from the people handling the resettlement programs not the cities themselves.

511: Syrian refugees who have arrived in Ottawa since November 4.

The loans, which are given to all refugees who do not have the required sum to pay their way to Canada, must be paid in installments.

The reason Victoria isn’t on the list dates back to the late 1980s when the federal government got out of the business of providing direct support to the refugees it was resettling and began contracting out to local agencies.