B.C. Premier Christy Clark reaffirmed her support for bringing refugees from war-torn Syria to Canada on Monday, but sounded skeptical about the federal government’s ability to screen 25,000 of them by year’s end.
Clark, who has promised $1 million to help settle the estimated 2,700 refugees who will land in B.C., said she believes security must come first.
“I don’t know that the number is the right one. I just know Canadians want to know their security processes are working well,” Clark said.
“I understand the urgency that people are feeling about inviting people from the worst war torn countries in the world. They are facing the kind of violence that unfolded in Paris,” she added.
Clark was less critical than Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall, who has called for the plan to be suspended.
“We have a refugee process that’s being driven by a date, and I don’t think that’s good public policy,” Wall told CTV News Channel.
It’s expected that Immigration Minister John McCallum will announce specifics by the end of the week. But the clock is ticking: with some six weeks left, Canada would have to bring in some 600 refugees each day.
B.C. faces a major hurdle to bring its share, said Immigrant Services Society of B.C.’s Chris Friesen.
Usually, B.C. brings in some 800 to 900 government assisted refugees each year. There are 500-600 privately sponsored refugees, and Friesen said some 1,200-1,500 refugee claimants who arrive at the airport to claim asylum each year as well.
Trudeau’s plan would triple the yearly government assisted refugees, in only six weeks. But Friesen said the scale of the plan is just a challenge this country can and should meet.
“The challenge before us is daunting but there is such will,” he said, adding that a variety of agencies met Monday at a Burnaby hotel to figure out how to get the job done.
“This could be a great Canadian national project. Coast to coast to coast Canadians are talking about how the time has come that we can come together as a country and provide some small measure of hope to a small number of Syrians of which half the population is internally displaced or refugees outside the country.”
Modest accomodations in B.C. is better than the best hope they have in the middle east, he added.
“It’s far better to put them on a cot in a basement of a church than allow them to stay another winter in a tent in the middle east.”
The B.C. Muslim Association says it has started fundraising efforts to bring in 15 to 20 families – about 80 people.
“We started our plan with raising funds,” the association's Shawkat Hasan said, adding the agency will hold a fundraiser in December.
Hasan believes Clark’s $1 million should go primarily toward mental health.
At least 16 U.S. governors have vowed to reject Syrian refugees on security grounds, despite concerns from U.S. legal experts that they had no authority to do so.
Many of those concerns rested on a Syrian passport found at the site of one of the bombings in Paris, believed to be masterminded by ISIS. The passport was reportedly fake. The only attackers identified by European authorities have been French or Belgian nationals.
Friesen said it would be a tragedy if that dubious passport led to the West turning its back on refugees, who also are running from ISIS.
“It would be disappointing if these attacks revictimize the Syrian refugees again,” he told CTV News.
