Toronto has plenty of capacity for refugee influx, city staff say

Thousands of Syrians are expected to settle in the GTA between now and March.

Thestar.com
Nov. 27, 2015
By David Rider

Syrian refugees are landing in Toronto, and the flow will increase very quickly, predicts Ontario’s largest immigration settlement agency.

“They’re starting to arrive,” Mario Calla, of COSTI Immigrant Services, told the Star on Friday. “I believe that it will really gear up very quickly over the next five to 10 days, because now it looks like the visas are coming through, the planes are coming. We expect it to ramp up very quickly.”

Toronto city staff are predicting that 2,000 to 2,500 refugees fleeing Syria’s brutal civil war will settle in the GTA between now and the end of March. Arrivals before January are expected to be primarily sponsored by private individuals and groups, with most of the federal government-sponsored newcomers arriving in the New Year.

But Calla, whose agency has the federal contract for government-assisted refugees in this region, says the estimate of GTA arrivals is a moving target.

Ontario has committed to welcome 10,000 of the 25,000 Syrians coming to Canada. With many expected to be drawn to existing Syrian communities in Toronto and Mississauga, the numbers that actually settle in the GTA could be double the 2,000 to 2,500 estimate, Calla said.

“We’re working with informed assumptions,” he said, adding resettlement preparations are going well.

While the numbers may seem daunting, Toronto should have no problem accommodating the influx, Chris Brillinger, Toronto’s executive director of social development, told a city committee this week.

“The migration inflows into Toronto have been steadily dropping for the last decade, and we are currently receiving about 50 per cent of the newcomers that we received 10 years ago, so there is some capacity within our systems,” he said.

“This city has a history of integrating far larger numbers of individuals,” Brillinger added. What is striking with the Syrian influx, he said, is that many will be traumatized by a treacherous flight from war and that they will be arriving in such a steady flow over a defined period of time.

He stressed that city staff have been busy for a month, co-ordinating with Toronto’s long-established resettlement agencies and looking for gaps to fill. That could include supporting Torontonians who sponsored Syrian families, and helping to match refugees with landlords.

Resettlement agencies, the three levels of governments, school boards and others are working well together to give the newcomers the best shot at success, he assured councillors.

Refugees will arrive, after full processing overseas including security and medical screenings, as “permanent residents” with all the rights of Canadian citizens except the right to vote.

Getting them into permanent housing will be the first priority, Brillinger said, noting that government-sponsored refugees will be financially supported for at least their first year.

“It is imperative that we do the absolute best job we can do in that 12-month period to see as many individuals (as possible) successfully on their own - in their own housing, with their own employment, to be successful overall,” he said.

Asked about the dropping number of newcomers to the city of Toronto in recent years, he said more are bound for the surrounding areas of the GTA.

“Permanent resident landings” to Toronto plummeted from about 65,000 in 2003 to 34,000 in 2013, the city says.

Calla said that is because of the skyrocketing cost of housing in Toronto. Also, federal immigration changes favouring wealthier, better-educated immigrants saw newcomers able to buy a home in a community such as Markham rather than rent in Toronto.

That pattern probably won’t hold for the Syrians, he said, because most will not have significant financial resources and many will want to be close to the social and cultural supports offered by Syrians already settled here.