The Canadian government says it's providing nearly $100 million to help alleviate the housing crisis in Toronto for refugees. The move comes after widespread criticism that governments were not moving fast enough to deal with the problem, which saw many refugees sleeping on the streets of Canada's biggest city.
For weeks now there have been uncomfortable images of refugees joining the homeless in sleeping on the streets of Toronto. The calls for the resignation of the head of the shelter system, Gord Tanner, came after a group of asylum seekers was forced to sleep on the sidewalk outside a downtown shelter.
Greg Cook is with Sanctuary Toronto. He says the SSHA oversees the decision to not allow refugees into the shelter system.
"That contravenes or goes against Toronto's own Sanctuary city policy as well as shelter standards," Cook said. "So, they're going against their own rules. And frankly, this act is discriminatory, it denies people emergency beds who need it, and we just think he has to go because of this."
Ontario Premier Doug Ford sidestepped the issue of refugee housing, taking a little swipe at Ottawa suggesting it was shirking its responsibility.
"You can't just drop people and say we're all done. It doesn't work that way," Ford said. "We need to work collaboratively all together."
But this week, Federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser announced that $210 million were being provided to help house asylum seekers, nearly half of that money just to the city of Toronto.
"The city of Toronto's share of this funding will be close to $100 million, more like $97 million is where I expect this to land," Fraser said. "Our modeling demonstrates this should more than cover the costs of interim housing for the people who are currently being denied access to the shelter system by the city of Toronto."
Help is also coming from other sources. Mohamed Fakhi, himself an immigrant, is the founder of Paramount Fine Foods. He's pledged $20,000 to help find a place or places to shelter refugees.
"It's wrong to happen in our country, in Canada, where we welcome people," Fakhi said. "And it's a place where all refugees and everyone came here to build a better life and a better living. So, what I'm hoping to do is to get them off the street and get a roof above their heads."
Toronto has long argued that its shelter system was not equipped to house an influx of refugees because it was already overstretched by people in the city who could not find affordable housing.
Abe Oudshoorn is the editor of Western University's International Journal on Homelessness.
"On the housing side, we've been in this real situation where the need for housing has not been met by both the availability of the housing and housing that's truly affordable for people," Oudshoorn said. "So, you sort of have these compounded needs and ultimately it just means there aren't enough spaces for people to be and enough affordable spaces for people."
Oudshoorn says it's not just refugees that face the problem. He says affordable housing has become an issue across Canada. At the same time, he says it's dismaying for refugees.
"Canada has always been a global destination. And we do need more people," Oudshoorn said. "It's this weird sort of dichotomy that we're living right now. We're having the baby boomers retiring on masse, and we have this large number of unfilled jobs. So, we need people to come, we need more. At the same time, we've really been unprepared for this necessity."
That argument is also supported by a new report from the Canadian economics division of the Desjardins Group, which provides financial forecasts in Canada. That report says Canada needs more immigrants to help drive the economy.
As for Toronto, Mayor Olivia Chow welcomes the new money but says it's not nearly enough.
Advocates say there must be a sustainable long-term solution to the issue of money, not just for Toronto. They say there are also 4,400 asylum seekers in hotels in Niagara, Windsor, Ottawa, Cornwall, Mississauga, and Kington.