Hoskins implores Ottawa to speed up refugee resettlement

Few politicians in Canada know more about the plight of refugees than Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins.

Thestar.com
Sept. 5, 2015
By Robert Benzie

Few politicians in Canada know more about the plight of refugees than Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins.

Hoskins, a physician who on Friday announced an additional $300,000 in provincial funding to help settle those fleeing war in Syria, understands the situation both as a front-line aid worker and a government official.

“We are a safe haven for the world’s most vulnerable and dispossessed,” the co-founder of War Child Canada told reporters at Lifeline Syria’s College Street office.

“It’s a history with which I am very familiar. I have spent my entire career working with refugees and families displaced by war in communities ravaged by conflict in Africa and the Middle East, including three years in Iraq,” he said.

Urging Ottawa to do more to help Syrian refugees come to Canada, Hoskins recalled when he worked as an advisor to then foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy during the 1999 Kosovo crisis.

“We made a decision - because it was the right thing to do - to urgently resettle 5,000 Kosovo refugees to Canada and we did this in less than one month. We can do this again,” he said.

“But we need to harness the political will. We have a collective responsibility to do what is needed, to make the necessary resources available, because we are running out of time. The time to act is now.”

Hoskins, who was also an advisor to the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict at the United Nations in 2002-03, said there is already the “public will” among Canadians to help Syrian refugees.

“Now it is time for governments to heed that public call,” he said, imploring Ottawa to cut red tape to expedite resettlement.

“Let’s set a target, a timeline, and meet it. So it is in that spirit of what’s possible that I ask the federal government to make a bold but attainable commitment to bring 5,000 Syrian refugees to Canada before the end of this year. We know we can do it.”