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McCallum: No guarantee Canada will meet year-end refugee goal
Canada’s immigration minister is signalling the federal government won’t meet its goal of bringing 10,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the year.
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A week ago, the government promised a flurry of flights in the last 10 days of the year, but the expected tempo of two or three planeloads of refugees a day out of Jordan and Lebanon has not materialized. Canada is working with the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, local governments and the International Organization for Migration to expedite the vetting process.
John McCallum, who was in the Jordanian capital Amman, meeting Syrian families preparing to board flights to Canada, told one family: “Everyone in Canada is waiting to meet you”.
“We are moving heaven and earth to get them here as quickly as we can but to do it in a way that is correct and appropriate and takes due concern for security, medical and other issues”, McCallum said.
“It’s certainly not guaranteed”, McCallum said, explaining that weather can cause cancellations and delays, and that “human nature” is also a factor.
On Wednesday, in his first Christmas video message, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau encouraged the country to show generosity to “thousands of people who are experiencing the Canadian holidays and the Canadian winter for the first time-the Syrian refugees”.
The Trudeau government recently and wisely reduced its election commitment to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of 2015 to 10,000. McCallum says there will be many, many more flights over the coming days. But in Canada, the resettlement program was met with support: The country’s 10 provincial premiers supported the initial move to bring in 25,000 refugees.
Nonetheless, he said he was “very confident” that 10,000 or more refugees will be processed as permanent residents by the end of the year and that 25,000 refugees would be in Canada before the end of February. Once the plane lands, the government will have succeeded in bringing in slightly more than 2,000 refugees since November 4.
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In addition, the Liberals have restricted single Syrian men to private sponsorship only, prompting criticism from both refugee advocates and the opposition New Democrats.