Trudeau promise tracker: Syrian refugee resettlement slowed in response to

Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan said the air force is prepared to “airlift refugees to Canada every 48 hours if needed”, although current plans rely largely on privately chartered aircraft.

António Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said: “This generous support from Canada is not only extremely timely, it is a true signal of leadership in responding to this huge and complex refugee crisis”. But the first batch of refugees to be resettled in Canada will largely be those with private sponsors; those the government is taking in through the United Nations will mostly arrive in 2016.

On the one hand, small-town Canada is where affordable housing can most easily be found for such a huge influx of Syrian refugees. It was not entirely based on the immediate needs of the refugees or, for that matter, Canadians.

“We can’t start sending people to a town that has no Arabic-speaking interpreters, no specialized medical intervention, no education system with an English-as-an-additional-language support teacher, no high school counsellor or child psychologist who’s dealt with a student of a refugee background before”, Mr. Friesen said. The Canadian government has launched several websites aimed at encouraging residents to receive them with open arms, in addition to promoting the #WelcomeRefugees hashtag on Twitter. “We need to have a rational behind-the-door discussion of what this really means'”.

That said, the Liberals’ plan deserves support.

“This is not a federal project”.

“I’ve been saying time and time again, that yes, we want to bring them fast, but we also want to do it right”, McCallum said, according to CNN.

The refugee resettlement program is now estimated to cost $678 million, far more than the $250 million promised by the Liberal party in their election platform.

Bibeau said the agency will put the money toward shelter, protection, education and health for the refugees.

Trudeau’s sweeping speech to a crowd that included Mark Carney, the Canadian governor of the Bank of England, a number of captains of industry and members of the House of Lords, attempted to wrap all his government’s themes under a single banner: Diversity. Early estimates are that about 300 families will come here.

The Trudeau government pledged new funding for the Syrian cause on Thursday.

In Canada, recently elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a Liberal, has backed off a campaign promise to welcome 25,000 Syrian refugees there by New Year’s Day – limiting the intake of exhausted, poor and huddled masses this year to 10,000, as long as none of them are single, heterosexual Syrian men.

Thursday’s announcement brings to $969 million the total amount of humanitarian assistance from Canada in response to the Syrian crisis, which has forced four million people to leave the country.