Tackling refugee crisis in Toronto on the agenda as Mayor Olivia Chow begins first full day in office

On her first full day in office, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow says the refugee crisis spilling over onto the city’s streets is one of the first items on her agenda.

“I'll be meeting my chief of staff of course and getting a briefing on TTC, meeting some councillors, doing some paperwork, and really looking at the crisis that we're facing right now in the streets, these refugees having no place,” Chow told CP24 in an interview early Thursday.

And as you know, it was pouring rain out there last night and this morning. If you have no shelter, no roof over your head with a soaking wet cardboard, oh my god it’s a miserable life. So it's tough. So that is a crisis that I want to deal with today.”

For weeks, refugees have been camped out at the corner of Peter and Richmond streets outside of an intake centre for the city’s shelter system. The city has started referring refugees to federal programs instead of admitting them to the shelter system with the rest of the population as refugees are an area of federal responsibility and the city’s crowded shelters typically operate at maximum capacity.

The federal government compensates the city in a piecemeal way year to year for taking care of refugees through city services when all else fails, but local officials have long said that the situation is unsustainable and the government of Canada should be doing more to house refugees on its own in an ongoing and sustainable way.

Chow officially took on the role of mayor Wednesday in a declaration of office ceremony at Toronto City Hall.

She said a meeting is set to take place tomorrow between local, provincial and federal officials to deal with the problem of housing refugees and asylum seekers.

“Here's the good news. Tomorrow, our city manager will be meeting his counterparts, provincial and federal, coming to the table to talk about the refugee issue, about how to deal with this crisis,” Chow said. “And we'll see. Hopefully, it'll be good news because we can't continue. One of the hotels that is near the airport that houses Ukrainian refugees right now, the contract is up. We don't have the money and we don't want to close the doors, but where are we going to find the money, right? So we're $160 million short on just the refugees file.”

She said the problem will only get worse as more refugees migrate to the city and added that when they come here fleeing difficult situations in places like Ukraine “we want them to have the best start in the city as possible.”

Speaking at a news conference in Hamilton Thursday, Premier Doug Ford said the province urgently needs to build housing in all municipalities to accommodate all sorts of newcomers, including refugees.

“We need to build homes for these people – these are just the newcomers – and refugees and immigrants that are coming to our province,” Ford said. “We have to build 1.5 million homes. Everyone has to divide that share up and we just need homes. Simple as that.”

Durham Regional Chair John Henry also released a statement this week saying that the municipality is struggling to keep up with the demand to house refugees.

“We—like other municipalities across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area—have expanded our services to support the influx of arrivals of refugees and asylum-seekers, while they establish themselves in Canada,” Henry wrote. “These expanded services have included the activation of emergency shelter systems as well as providing wraparound services to help newcomers settle in the region.

“Over the last few weeks, the number of newcomers arriving in our community has increased. And, despite our best efforts, we cannot keep up with this demand. We have exhausted the capacity in our system and any funding we had available to support newcomers.”

He said the financial and occupancy pressures on the region’s local programs have exceeded capacity with “unprecedented financial and occupancy pressures” and called on the federal and provincial governments to step up to help.

“The sad reality is that it leaves many newcomers homeless or at risk of becoming homeless,” he said of the situation.

Chow called out the federal government last week for “not paying a cent” to support refugees in Toronto’s shelter system, where it’s estimated that as many as a third of users are refugees.