Growing Canada's Population : Reducing General Quality of Life

"Everyone deserves a safe place to call home ... And Canada is stepping up: In 2022, for the fourth year in a row, we were the top country in the world to resettle refugees."

"Today, we come together as Canadians to keep our country a welcoming place and help build a safer world for everyone."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, World Refugee Day

"Only ten people are allowed to shower each day and washroom access is one at a time."

"Menstruating women told us how difficult it was for them to stay clean under these conditions."

"Washroom/shower access is also only between 8:am and 8:pm."

Diana Chan McNally, homelessness advocate, Toronto

Asylum seekers line up as volunteers from the Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention hand out food, water and supplies. (Patrick Swadden/CBC)

Canada has taken in -- and allegedly absorbed -- a whopping huge one million immigrants, students on study visas, refugees and illegal migrants in the year before this. Vastly in excess of any G7 country. A measure of the current Liberal government's commitment to grow the Canadian population as befitting a huge geographic area that is Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic. Canada's population has swelled to 40 million people. 

Some of whom are fortunate and prosper in the country north of the United States with its population ten times that of Canada's on a slightly smaller territory. Many of whom live in poverty or close to it, in an economy hit hard like all others around the world during the years of desperately coping with a world coronavirus pandemic. Now, the country is short of labourers and workers of all kinds, from construction sites to hospitals.

The cost of living has strained peoples' budgets, and those who can no longer cope have joined the legion of the homeless, living in shelters or on the streets. The once-vaunted universal hospitalization/medical-care system that Canadians were so proud of is being strained beyond its ability to cope with an ageing population, one that is growing even while facilities to look after their health problems are diminishing. Many Canadians cannot find a primary health-care physician.

Housing has become enormously expensive as the national housing stock cannot keep up with demand and building costs rise. Rental rates have expanded even as the number of rentals available to meet the demand have declined proportionally. Food Bank use has skyrocketed; more people than ever before using the Food Banks as stop-gaps between paycheques, while others cannot afford nutrition at the best of times.

 

Some asylum seekers outside the city’s shelter intake office at Peter and Richmond streets downtown have been sleeping on the street for over a month waiting for shelter. (Patrick Swadden/CBC)

 

Into this sorry mess steps economic migrants from Central America, Haiti and Africa, lured to a First World country advertising itself as open to refugees. Illegal border crossers from the United States into Canada have been welcomed in the sense that if they declare themselves as refugees seeking haven, they are permitted to fill out application forms and to enter the country to await a formal decision by the Canada Immigration and Refugee board. A decision that could take up to several years.

The illegal migrants gravitate to the country's cities where the social welfare system is expected to care for their needs; housing, schooling, medical care. While waiting for decisions on a refugee claim, the claimant may apply for a work permit, allowing them to take employment. In the interim, they become wards of the municipality where they settle. Toronto, Canada's largest, most populous city, takes the brunt of the migrants' presence.

Many are temporarily housed in hotels and motels, and when none are available, directed to a City of Toronto assessment and referral centre for the homeless. Toronto's homeless shelters are full, housing mostly Canadians who have fallen on ill times, but fully a third are represented by migrants, some of them entire families. Since there is no room at the city shelters, they wait indefinitely in the open, unsheltered until such time their need can be addressed.

They sleep in the outdoors regardless of weather, and many are unable to access sufficient food and water. They have started to set up urban encampments with the use of tarps, sleeping bags and blankets brought along by charitable volunteers. The situation is so fraught with discomfort of rough living that some are taken to hospital emergencies suffering physical and psychological afflictions reflecting their plight. They are in essence, abandoned by any level of government.

 

Municipalities have asked the federal government for funding and assistance, but to no avail. Those considered refugees are the responsibility of the federal government, under Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. The same federal government that allows record numbers of refugee claimants to enter Canada, but which has failed to distribute funding to municipalities, or to build additional shelters for refugees. 

 

Momodou Sumbumdu, left, Prosscovia Namusisi of Uganda, centre, and Asuman Najib Ssali, have been sleeping on the street in front of a Toronto shelter for weeks. (Patrick Swadden/CBC)

"That system [dedicated refugee system] has 2,000 spaces and is currently full. Up until June 1, to address the persistent demand, refugee claimants were also being admitted into the base shelter system. There are currently an additional 1,000 refugees in the base system."

"The City had hoped not to have to make this change, [to no longer house refugees in non-refugee shelters] but after more than a year of requesting urgent funding assistance and logistical support, we had to make difficult decisions."

"The City has been meeting with the Federal government for over a year, stressing the need for urgent funding and asking for a long-term strategy and logistical support for the current surge of new arrivals. The Federal government need to allocate the appropriate resources to ensure people have support when they arrive."

"Hundreds of millions [are required to support the surge of new arrivals accessing the city’s shelter system]."

"Currently, the City has funding to support 500 individuals but is using reserve resources to support over 3,000 refugees who are using the system per day. Operating these 2,500 unfunded spaces requires $157 million."

Toronto’s Shelter, Support and Housing Administration 

"Canada Will Welcome You"

"[Some people may find it] shocking [to see migrants put up in  hotels, but it's] certainly better than seeing them in the streets."
"Maybe there is a middle ground between the hotel and the street. But what is the middle ground? Putting them up in community housing that's already sorely lacking?"

"I find that those who say Canada is 'rolling out the red carpet' for migrants are going too far."

"I get the impression that it's extremely lucrative for certain people -- like for the buses and taxis in Plattsburgh that travel to Roxham Road. [I look on it as a form of] human trafficking."

Mayor Estelle Muzzi, St-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec

"Every time there's a bus that arrives, there's somebody going to Roxham."

"Sometimes I pick up one person, sometimes it's five. They sometimes come in by bus for free from New York City because the mayor paid for everything. But once people get here, they got no goddamn money. So sometimes I take them for free."

"I grew up in poverty, I'm sensitive to it. I understand these people's desire to try anything and pay everything in the hope of a better life."

Tom, taxi driver, Plattsburgh, N.Y. Greyhound terminal

A family of five enters Canada from the U.S. at Roxham Road. Photo by Dave Sidaway / Montreal Gazette

The buses arrive, from New York City where authorities there persuade migrants who have been bused by authorities in Texas and elsewhere on the border with Mexico, to New York City to relieve the strain on their own cities, to agree to travel a little further on NYC's dime, to take refuge in Canada, where they would be welcomed with open arms. They could always cite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's offhand invitation for refugees to consider coming to Canada which would welcome them with open arms.

 

Refugees who crossed the U.S.-Canada border at Lacolle on Feb. 23, were processed and were moved by bus to their next stop. Photo by Dave Sidaway /Montreal Gazette

But that was before the unstoppable influx of migrants, and he was reacting to then-President Trump's crackdown on migrants flooding the U.S.-Mexico border, just to show how sanctimoniously superior  \he was compared to Trump. Now, after years of tens of thousands making their illegal way across the border from the U.S. into Canada, the provincial premiers are becoming beyond annoyed and expressing their opinion of the strain on social welfare resources that they've been forced to deal with.

 

"To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you", invited Mr. Trudeau, and since then 100,000 migrants have crossed into Canada. Quebec no longer absorbs the migrants since it began complaining that too much strain was placed on its social support and healthcare system. Redistribution of asylum claimants from Roxham Road has taken place, to cities in Ontario: Ottawa, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Cornwall, and others. 

Zulema Diaz (R) and Maryangel Diaz, two Latino women who crossed from the U.S. border to Roxham Road in Quebec, order coffee at a hotel, in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada March 7, 2023. REUTERS/Carlos Osorio

 

People escaping poverty and crime in Haiti and Central America, violence and persecution in the Middle East, lack of opportunities in Africa, don't realize that there are people living in poverty in Canada with shrinking incomes and a huge rise in the cost of living. Medical/hospitalization services, welfare, assisted housing, are all stretched to their limits. Canada is a land of opportunity for some, but by no means all its indigenous and immigrant population.

Now, a fee of $50 or $70US will pay for a trip from the bus station to the closest, easiest illegal crossing -- Roxham Road -- from New York to Quebec where migrants carry their belongings and illegally walk across the border to Canada preparing to make an asylum claim. They are intercepted by the RCMP explaining that they've passed a legitimate border crossing. There, if they present themselves, they will be turned back reflecting a border agreement with the U.S. that neither will accept a claimant who originated from the other side, considered a 'safe haven'.

 

Asylum seekers, who state they are from Turkey, walk down Roxham Road to cross into Canada from the U.S. in Champlain, New York, U.S., February 28, 2023. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi

 

Once the RCMP officers hear the words ''refugee claim', the migrants are escorted to a central receiving area from which they will be transported to hotels. They will be fed and sheltered at government expense. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spent $136 million on 'temporary accommodation in the last 2-1/2 years for asylum claimants entering through Roxham Road for meals, accommodation, transportation and security and another $551.5 million to provinces and municipalities.

If the government agency determines the migrants are eligible for an asylum claim, they are provided access to 'social assistance, education, health services, emergency housing and legal aid' as they await the IRCC's determination on their case, a process that can take years, reflecting significant backlogs. Backlogs encompassing people going through legal channels in the immigration system who find themselves waiting longer as a result of the illegal migrants' claims.

According to RCMP agents, a growing number of migrants have been arriving by way of Florida where they fly into the U.S., pay to take a minibus for the long drive north to Roxham Road. The bus route to Plattsburgh is a five-hour drive from New York City, It has become a booming route since New York City began giving out free bus tickets to migrants who agree to relocate elsewhere, including those wanting to cross into Canada.