Canada's Health Care System Groaning Under Levels of Unprecedented Demand

"[The Liberal government's temporary Interim Federal Health Program -- IFHP] has turned into a multi-year, taxpayer-funded entitlement where tens of thousands of bogus asylum claimants are provided health benefits that Canadians are not eligible for."

"The Liberals must explain to Canadians why asylum seekers who have had their refugee claims rejected, are facing enforceable removal orders, and in some cases fail to appear for removal, continue to receive deluxe, tax-payer funded health benefits while they avoid leaving Canada."

Conservative health critic Dan Mazier and immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner

 

"IFHP eligibility is further extended when claimants pursue appeals before the Refugee Appeal Division (RAD) or the Federal Court, as well as during the completion of a Pre-Removal Risk Assessment (PRRA). On average, about 20 per cent of all claims referred to the IRB are appealed at least once at the RAD. Nearly 50 per cent of claimants who ultimately received a negative decision from the IRB in 2019 remained in the system for more than three years following that decision."

"As of February 2026, approximately 74,000 “failed refugee claimants”, defined as individuals who made a claim for refugee protection in Canada and did not obtain protection, were in the CBSA removals inventory."

"Failed refugee claimants may remain eligible for IFHP coverage while their cases are being assessed through ongoing immigration or risk-related processes (e.g., PRRA), and in some cases until their departure from Canada. Together, these factors substantially lengthen IFHP eligibility for a significant share of unsuccessful claimants. 

Parliamentary Budget Office report 

The Globe&Mail.com

 

Over $722 million was spent by the government of Canada in the provision of extensive health care to tens of thousands of asylum seekers, including a large number spent on 'failed refugee claimants' awaiting determination of status in the approvals system, or those who have been actively avoiding removal orders in the last fiscal year, the latest report of the Parliamentary Budget Office points out, in castigating the government for its lax processing and inexplicable devotion to providing migrants with a level of health care often not matched directed toward Canadian citizens.

 

As a result of 'backlogs in the country's asylum system, claimants are left waiting, sometimes for up to three years before their claims are officially either accepted or denied. In the interim their health care needs, at an unprecedented level of coverage, are catered to, and costs continue to rise under the Interim Federal Health Program. A program originally created to provide limited, temporary coverage in health care to foreign nationals considered to be disadvantaged and vulnerable. 

 

"As of December 2025, over 300,000 asylum claims were pending adjudication and  roughly 65 percent of these pending claims have been in the system for longer than a year." 

"This represents a five-fold increase since 2021 and is anticipated to increase in the near-term due to an influx of claims made between 2023 and 2025."

"[The number waiting between to and three years] will notably rise by 2027-27, reflecting elevated past intake and constrained exit rates."

Parliamentary Budget Office 

 

For 2024-25, total spending across all health care categories and beneficiary groups came closer to $822 million, accounting for resettled refugees' inclusion. This category "are selected and assessed abroad, with admission targets set in the Government's Immigration Levels Plan, resulting in relatively predictable intake and processing timelines". Asylum seekers on the other hand, noted the Parliamentary Budget Office, claimed an average of $724 per beneficiary each year on basic care representing doctor visits, hospital care, ambulances, labs, diagnostic testing and immigration medical examinations, in contrast to the resettled refugees' average of $97 for the same period.

 

It was found by the PBO that per-person spending on basic care increased consistently, while spending on supplementary health products and services such as urgent dental treatment, prescription drug coverage, vision care, counselling services, assistive devices and others increased at an accelerated rate. Canada spent $94 million on supplementary benefits across all groups in the 2019-20 fiscal year and by 2023-24 there was a near tripling to $285 million, reaching $457 million in 2024-25.

 

Prescription drugs and urgent dental care in particular accounted for 80 percent of the spending. PBO figures revealed that the number of dental claims rose by 43 percent between 2019 and 2025 (240,000 to 1.4 million claims). Higher average cost per claim combined to drive dental costs from $30 million to $257 million in that time frame. "Elevated intakes" and the "persistent backlogs" that resulted were identified as major drivers of increased expenses. In 2019 there were 64,150 claims -- which by 2024 rose to 173,000.

 

The present time sees about half (47 percent) of claimants in the system between one and two years with that number expected to rise.  Each additional month in processing time, according to PBO calculations, could drive program costs up by $72 million in the approaching fiscal year. Applicants must pass through several review layers to attain asylum refugee status, and if rejected can utilize several appeal avenues, which can take years, during which they they remain eligible for IFHP. 

Canada spent over $722 million on health care for asylum seekers in the last fiscal year as refugee backlogs and failed claims drove costs. Photo by Getty Images

 

Also eligible are the "nearly 74,000 failed refugee claimants" among the the CBSA (Canada Border Services Agency) removals inventory where currently 23, 4289 removals are in process, alongside 27,797 rejected applicants who failed to appear for removal and are in the process of being sought by border authorities for enforced removal.  

"These are  benefits that Canadians who have paid into the system their entire lives can't access."

 "It is undeniable that as the backlog grows, rejected asylum claimants continue adding pressure to a health care system where Canadians are already facing long wait times for care."

Conservative health critic Dan Mazier 

Canada, Diminished and Faltering

"One could argue that we've lost that unifying sense of right and wrong."

"The very sense of [the] liberal, permissive, non-judgmentally embracing society that our countries were fundamentally founded on is now being openly exploited for the purpose  of reshifting the balance." 

Former Vice-Chief of the Canadian Defence Staff, Mark Norman

 

"Symbolic politics has never been sufficient, it is a sign of weak leadership. Condemnations without enforcement, statements without consequences and gestures without policy are not leadership."

"Canadians do not need additional legislation layered over existing statutes. We need the consistent application of the laws already in force.e"

"Canada is lost and no longer immune. A nation cannot remain open if it forgets how to be a nation. The choice is not between tolerance and cohesion. It is between a confident pluralism anchored in shared civic norms, and a politics of endless accommodation that dissolves the very framework that makes diversity possible."

Larry Maher, CEO, Exigent Foundation

Anti-Israel protesters block a downtown Toronto street to pray as police watch. Photo by Caryma Sa’d/X

 

It took no more than a  decade to fundamentally alter Canada, reverse many of its values, not the least the outstanding human right assurance of equality and rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. With that assurance came the expected responsibility of each member of society to respect the social contract that ensured equal opportunities (if not equal outcomes) to succeed and prosper for Canadian citizens who obeyed Canadian laws and whose experience in the general education system helped them to understand their citizen obligations to the country. 

 

In an earlier era those rights and obligations were unevenly applied and issues of discrimination against minority groups reflected a European heritage of entitlement and belittlement of the exotic 'others' who had made their way into North America, many as refugees fleeing persecution and conflict. Under moderately good governance evinced by leaders who at best understood their own guiding obligations to the people they served, laws were passed that ushered Canada into an era of fair justice and social cohesion.

 

Migrants from abroad who entered Canada in the first half of the 20th century as immigrants from impoverished backgrounds to make a home for themselves in a new country where opportunities abounded worked hard, obeyed laws, and accommodated themselves to a new culture with values that suited their own notions of being and belonging. Canadian authorities refined immigration rules to eventually reflect Canada's needs in a point system that rewarded education, professional qualifications, age suitability and an assessed philosophical fit.

 

A succession of Liberal governments in more recent times gradually morphed toward the kind of liberal progressivism that loosened qualifications and requirements of suitability to join the Canadian population. Sympathy for people searching for haven from authoritarian governments, from endemic poverty, from societal crime rates, from conflict zones opened the gates of entry to Canada wide, including the refugee class and illegal migrants who bypassed normal entrance procedures to declare themselves refugees. 

 

Prime Minister Mark Carney, left, is greeted by Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, centre, as he arrives in Doha on Jan. 18. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

 

The intake swelled, fulfilling what government and business leaders professed to be a need to replace an aging, low-child-bearing population with new recruits to build Canada's working population. Entry to the country no longer relied on screening for adaptability and suitability for integration into the prevailing culture, its values and its laws. To the point where landed immigrants and new citizens openly declared their defiance of those values and accompanying laws, bringing havoc and division and open discrimination to the very streets of the cities throughout the country where they settled in influential numbers.

 

Newcomers to the country felt no loyalty to the country that had adopted them and there were no expectations from government that they should integrate and accept the prevailing social order as it was. Instead religious and ideological divisions erupted and with no amending reaction from government and institutions at any level, those divisions deepened, becoming more publicly expressed, including through deliberate acts of law-breaking.   

 

Canadians of long standing were treated to displays of overt challenges to the  public order in universities and cultural institutions where mass protests took to the streets, bringing foreign campaigns, conflicts, ideological convictions averse to Canada's own, to the fore, with no government intervention at any level. All the while Canada congratulated itself as a bastion of liberal democracy. Politicians rather than applying themselves to Canada's and its populations' defense, eyeing the numbers of voluble protests and the votes they represented, chose appeasement of activist groups.

 

Canadian PM Mark Carney : China's President Xi Jinping AP

 

And from the outside world, lax attention to the actions of foreign powers that invaded Canada's sovereignty through the infiltration of foreign agents acting on their behalf on the social, academic and political levels exercised the 'soft power' of authoritarian regimes and of extremist movements, effectively interfering in Canada's politics as well as the social contract unique to Canada. Russia, China, Iran, 
Qatar, Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood all have made an indelible impact within Canada with their malign presence. 

 

The moral, institutional foundations of Canada's principles of equality and human rights have been assailed by Islamist, Marxist, socialist and other radical engagements in destabilizing Canada, as well as other Western nations they have entered both legally and under the radar. What all these Western nations appear to have in common is an attitude of oblivious disinterest in the interference and subtle changes being wrought in normalizing abnormal social behaviour and its effect on their institutions.

 

The exploitation of liberal societies, priding themselves on their Democratic principles of inclusion appear willing to accept the slow erosion of their adherence to the public weal rather than risk being labelled racist, exclusionary or 'Islamophobic'. Identity politics, moral relativism, and DEI guide governments content to do nothing in response to the unravelling of their nations' stability and social coherence. If there is a solution to Western democracies' inaction in the face of this dilemma, it has not yet shown its face. 

 

Canadian universities have seen a surge of pro-Palestinian protests following similar demonstrations across North America.  University Affairs

 

Canadian Immigration, Refugee and Migrant Intake

"While most observers attribute the persistent concern with the numbers of refugees to economic concerns and housing challenges, the survey looks at the extent to which Canadians trust immigrants and refugees and finds that amongst those Canadians who feel that there are too many immigrants, the level of trust in refugees is especially low."

"This may imply that concerns over domestic intergroup tensions may be a more important factor in concern with levels than has been previously acknowledged." 

Analysis of national Leger poll

Protesters at the Hindu Sabha Mandir temple in Brampton, Ontario.  Photograph: Nick Lachance/Toronto Star/Getty Images

 

"Intergroup tensions", as for example Canadian Hindus versus Canadian Sikhs with their traditions of suspicion and distrust, acting out within Canada in viral events of dangerous dimensions, the two solitudes coming to blows, endangering the communities and bringing international attention to their divisions. It is, in fact, the communities' propensities to have among them cliques that also engage in illegal, criminal activities domestically in Canada. But above all, the ongoing agenda of the Khalistani Sikhs who agitate for a separate Sikh state to be divided from India's interior. Canada's worst terrorist assault was one committed by British Columbia Khalistanis who placed a bomb aboard Air India Flight 182 that killed all 329 people aboard, in 1982.

 

Canada has a population of Sri Lankans, among them members of the Tamil Tigers who in the past agitated for their own separatist state, committing violent crimes in Sri Lanka in support of their sovereign aspirations against the country's military and members of government. Canadian Sri Lankans belonging to the Tamil Tigers promulgated their violent terrorist propaganda, drawing Canada involuntarily into a debate roiling another country entirely, until the Tigers were delivered a crushing blow that devastated their numbers in Sri Lanka and put their designs to rest.

 

Propaganda billboards in the region of Sri Lanka controlled by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, April 22, 2007. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

 

But wait: the current Liberal government of prime minister Mark Carney elevated a former sympathizer of the Tigers, MP Gary Anandasangaree, to the important Cabinet post of Public Safety Minister. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, along with the Tamil Tigers and World Tamil Movement, are listed terrorist groups in Canada. Minister Anandasangaree took the step of recusing  himself from anything to do with these two groups, as Public Safety Minister. But it was discovered, that as a Member of Parliament years previous, he had written a letter in support of a former Tamil Tiger facing deportation from Canada.

 

And nor to overlook the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees brought to Canada during Syria's 14-year sectarian civil war when former regime Shia-Alawite President Bashar al-Assad barrel- and chemical-bombed Syria's Sunni population killing an estimated third of a million Syrians; years that saw half the population of the country internally displaced, and millions more seeking haven abroad. These intake refugees along with a sizeable Palestinian-Canadian population and other Muslim groups in Canada totalling almost two million have made their presence known in ongoing street protests against Israel.

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters chant during a demonstration protesters are calling a "National March for Palestine" near Parliament Hill (Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)

 

Since the 2023 October 7 incursion of thousands of Palestinian terrorists from Gaza into southern Israel who embarked on a sadistically savage rampage of rape, mutilation and mass murder, killing 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping another 250 children, women, elderly, foreign farm workers and a number of Israeli IDF members, leading to a military response by the IDF into Gaza to route out Hamas leaders and operatives, Muslim groups in Canada, led primarily by Palestinians living in Canada have harassed Canadian Jews, threatened their security, committed violent criminal acts and behaved in a manner inconsistent with Canadian values and justice. 

"We're trying o probe here whether Canadians do have security concerns that are also driving some of the reticence or hesitation about immigration right now. My conclusion is that that is the case."

"The point of the survey is, there is an issue that we need to pay attention to. If there is a security concern associated with migration right now, it requires some attention and a need to reassure Canadians that our government and the responsible departments are taking care of those issues, are paying attention to those issues if and when they arrive, or where and when they may arise."

"We're seeing the degree of trust expressed in refugees as especially low. And particularly amongst those people who think there are too may immigrants, the trust of refugees is low, lower than it is normally."

"Whether you're born in Canada or not born in Canada, or whether you're a minority or not, this issue around trust, and the perceptions around the global instability, is affecting our perspectives around migration." 

Jack Jedwab, president, chief executive, Association for Canadian Studies and the Metropolis Institute  

The new poll in question conducted nationally for the Association for Canadian Studies and the Metropolis Institute, found 62 percent of people polled feel Canada is accepting too many people, over double the number that expressed those sentiments  six year earlier. Only 20 percent disagreed, while 19 percent responded they  don't know. Canadians were asked if they think immigrants can be trusted, and the 52 percent of Canadians who said they can, saw 36 percent responding in the negative when the issue is that of refugees being trusted -- 20 percent adamant that immigrants cannot be trusted; 23 percent felt the same about refugees.

 

For the question whether there are too many people coming to Canada, among those who declare there are, 32 percent only, trust immigrants; 28 percent felt they cannot be trusted, and for refugees those numbers were 24 percent trusting; another 32 percent felt they cannot be trusted. And it is immigrants themselves that agree, by 57 percent, that too many immigrants are arriving to Canada, near matching the numbers of non-immigrant responders. Non-white people surveyed saw 61 percent agreeing there are too many immigrants in comparison to 58 percent of white people. 

"That polarization is not based on whether you are yourself an immigrant or you are a minority, it's not. It's transcending that. So the trust issue is a critical factor. It's just not defined by, as I said, your status as an immigrant or non-immigrant or as a minority. Those groups of people are making observations to the same extent across those markers of identity."

"It is important that we properly understand what the factors are underlying the reticence about immigration. So that's where the importance ... is in trying to establish what the concerns are, how significant those concerns are, where those concerns are coming from."

"And then, on that basis, to determine how best to address them rather than dismissing them."

Jack Jedwab 

The Canadian Citizenship Ceremony  -- Still from video

 

Exalting Terrorism and Expressing Antisemitism In Germany -- One Count and You're Out!

"[The acts perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 have been] celebrated in a repugnant way [on social media in Germany. [The attack in Mannheim] also was glorified on the net by many in the most appalling way."

"Such brutalization online stokes a climate of violence that can drive extremists to new acts of violence."

"So it's very clear to me that Islamist agitators who mentally live in the Stone Age have no place in our country. Anyone who has no German passport and glorifies terrorist acts here must, wherever possible, be expelled and deported."

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser

A protester is dragged away by police officers during a pro-Palestinians demonstration on the campus of Berlin's Free University, in Berlin, Germany, May 7, 2024.

 

New legislation is being launched in Germany to make it easier to deport foreigners who engage in public approval of terrorism. With the new law a sole, single comment posted to social media could conceivably represent adequate grounds for government agencies to deport those it considers have countered the law, offending Germany's moral and ethical codes unpermitting of verbal violence against Jews in particular. 

Public demands that the state  take remediative action against foreign elements that have supported the Hamas atrocities in southern Israel on October 7, and the rising levels of antisemitism that have resulted from among asylum seekers compelled Chancellor Olaf Scholz to take hard action against those who unreservedly promote hate among themselves and infecting larger parts of the population.

 

A man attacks people with a knife, at a far right-wing information stand of the Buergerbewegung Pax Europa (BPE) in the central market of the city of Mannheim, Germany, May 31, 2024, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. Buergerbewegung Pax Europa/Handout via REUTERS

 

The Cabinet approved the measure in the wake of a deadly knife attack a month ago against a group describing itself as opposition to "political Islam". During the assault a police officer was killed. Migration continues to be a headache for Germany. Under Chancellor Angela Merkel, in 2015 a million asylum seekers, basically economic migrants, were permitted to enter Germany when the EU was being flooded with an unstoppable migrant rush, mostly young males from the Middle East and North Africa.

Now, Chancellor Scholz faces a backlash by a population fed up with rising crime levels and in particular violence against women where incidents of rape have increased substantially. More latterly, since the October 7 Hamas assault in Israel, many from among the migrant community have expressed their general contempt and hatred for Jews; their cultural/religious racism in free expression.

 

New citizenship legislation stipulates that naturalized people must be capable of supporting themselves and their relatives financially, that those seeking citizenship be committed to the "free democratic fundamental order" is already covered under the existing law, with the new version specifying that antisemitic and racist acts are incompatible with the original stipulation. 

 

Basically, according to government rules, issues like antisemitism, Israel's right of existence, along with Jewish security in Germany now have greater weight in the test for citizenship which applicants must undergo.

 

The country's law on residence will also undergo change; approving or promoting "a single terrorist crime" is to be viewed as grounds for a "particularly serious interest in expulsion", according to the German Interior Ministry. In other words, a single comment that "glorifies and endorses a terrorist crime on social media" could result in expulsion.

Under the new guidelines anyone publicly approving of an offence "in a manner which is suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace", could face expulsion, without  a conviction. Simple social media post 'likes' will not fall into the deportation category. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser expressed her confidence that these changes would shortly be approved by lawmakers, nor is she concerned that freedom of speech laws would be impacted.

Source: JGI/Tom Grill / GettyImages.de

"Investing" in Canada's Future

"We are very close to the breaking point due to the excessive number of asylum seekers arriving in Quebec month after month. The situation has become unsustainable."

"Asylum seekers have trouble find a place to live, which contributes to accentuating the housing crisis. Many end up in homeless shelters, which are overflowing."

"The possibility of entering Canada from Mexico without a visa certainly explains part of the influx of asylum seekers."

"The airports, particularly in Toronto and Montreal, are becoming sieves and it is time to act."

Quebec Premier Francois Legault 

RCMP officers unveil a new sign at Roxham Road. (Carlos Osorio/Reuters)

 

The Liberal government of Justin Trudeau has much to account for; its laissez-faire attitude toward illegal entry into Canada has come home to roost. The acute housing shortage that Canada and Canadians have encountered, with the younger demographic marrying and preparing to raise a family experiencing the rude awakening of recognition that the normal trajectory of young adults moving into an era of their own where they expect to buy a home to get on with their lives with the same kind of comfortable predictability as their parents is no longer possible.

People get off a bus at a gas station to take a taxi to cross into Canada at Roxham Road on March 25. (Carlos Osorio/Reuters)

 

There is general agreement among financial houses, economists and the broader public that recognizes the influx of people as a result of immigration, refugee intake, student study visas, work visas and illegal migrant arrivals have stretched Canada's resources -- not just housing, but medical and hospitalization, and other levels of social services, including emergency housing of the unhoused and homeless -- beyond its capacity to absorb any more.

The federal government, it has been revealed, introduced a million newcomers to Canada through refugee intake, immigration, student visas, work permits and migrants in the last year alone. And it has stated it has no intention to cut down on absorbing new waves of people into Canada's population. Canada has always welcomed newcomers, but never on this scale; among G7 countries Canada absorbs far more people than its nearest contemporaries. Canada sees it as a competitive story; as populations are failing to reproduce themselves and becoming older, the economy suffers with not enough people to  fill employment needs.

 

Quebec's premier has now formally requested that the Trudeau government cut back on its embrace of asylum seekers. In 2022, he pointed out, Quebec absorbed more asylum seekers than the rest of the country combined through the unofficial Roxham Road crossing point south of Montreal. COVID slowed the influx. "However, t he arrivals have continued to increase at airports. The number of people arriving on a visitor visa and applying for asylum is also increasing significantly", he wrote.

 

 In the first 11 months of 2023 close to 60,000 new asylum seekers registered in Quebec, which has placed the province in a position of "very significant pressure" on services. Asylum seekers awaiting work permits, stressed the premier, receive financial assistance from Quebec. Some 43,200 asylum seekers received $33 million in aid last October. Mexican nationals represent a growing proportion of asylum seekers arriving, among those from the Middle East, Africa and Central America.

Legault's recommendation is that the federal government take serious action to tighten its policies of granting visas. As well the "equitable" distribution of asylum seekers across Canada should be an issue to be studied, possibly by busing them to other provinces. As well, he expects the federal government to reimburse Quebec for the $470  million it has cost the province on taking in asylum seekers in 2021 and 2022, and formalize reimbursement for subsequent years.

People wait at a gas station to take a taxi to cross into Canada at Roxham Road, an illegal crossing point from New York State to Quebec, in Plattsburgh, N.Y. (Carlos Osorio/Reuters)

Migrant Tragedies at Sea - And Still they Come

"In the afternoon, a merchant vessel approached the ship and provided it with food and supplies, while the [passengers] refused any further assistance."

"[It was impossible to accurately estimate the number of passengers. It appeared that the 25- to 30-meter [80- to 100-foot] vessel capsized after people abruptly moved to one side]."

"The outer deck was full of people, and we presume that the interior [of the vessel] would also have been full."

"It looks as if there was a shift among the people who were crammed on board, and it capsized."

Coast guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou 

 

"The last time we spoke was eight days ago, and [my wife] told me that she was getting ready to get on the boat."

"She had paid $5,000 [to smugglers]. And then we all know what happened."

Kassem Abu Zeed, 34-year-old Syrian refugee living in Hamburg

Hellenic Coast Guard via AP

A fishing boat capsized on Wednesday and sank off the Greek coast, carrying migrants determined to reach Europe. First count is 79 people dead and hundreds missing in what is considered to be the worst drowning disaster of migrants this year. The vessel had been spotted and was reported. The Italian coast guard alerted Greek authorities and the European Union border protection agency, Frontex on Tuesday of the presence and approach of a migrant-carrying ship.

Following the alert, Frontex aircraft and two merchant ships spotted the boat as it headed north at  high speed. Additional aircraft and ships were sent to the area. Repeated calls to the vessel of offers of assistance were dismissed by those aboard the ship. The coast guard then followed the ship as it neared the coast, eventually to watch in helpless dismay as the ship sank in mere minutes. One of the rescued passengers informed them that the below hold had held over a hundred children.

Associated Press

A vast search-and-rescue operation ensued and would continue overnight, involving coast guard, navy and merchant vessels and aircraft. How many passengers might be trapped in the vessel or could still be in the water was unknown, but initial reports suggested that hundreds may have been on board. The vessel was judged to have a tight capacity of 500 people, and it was thought that the number of people on it when it capsized exceeded that cap by at least 250 additional passengers.

Nine of those rescued have been placed under arrest, initially suspected as traffickers. Someone made the decision to spurn all offers of assistance and it could not have been the passengers. Those in authority from the ship detained to respond to questions over details of the ship's passage and its passengers will have much to answer for. According to Greek authorities, 104 people were rescued following the sinking overnight in international waters, 75 km southwest of Greece's Peloponese peninsula.

The oceanic area where the sinking took place is close to the deepest area of the Mediterranean; depths of such magnitude that could hamper efforts to locate a sunken metal vessel. At the southern port of Kalamata, some 70 exhausted survivors were bedded down in sleeping bags and blankets in an immense warehouse. Outside the structure, paramedics set up tents for first aid requirements. The migrants were also offered psychological support.

Among the survivors were 30 people from Egypt, ten from Pakistan, 35 from Syria and 2 Palestinians. The Greek coast guard spoke of having recovered 79 bodies.

"Those smugglers were supposed to only have 500 on the boat and now we hear there were 750."

"What is this? [Five of his relatives were on board the boat]. Are they cattle or humans?"

"How can they do this?"

Mohamed Abdi Marwan, who spoke by phone from Kobani

It appears that the nine survivors arrested on suspicion of being part of the smuggling ring that had arranged the voyage, are all Egyptian nationals. The shop had originally departed from an Egyptian port heading for the area of Tobruk in Libya where the migrants were awaiting pick-up. Bound for Italy, the boat is believed to have sailed from Tobruk, one of the main departure points for smuggler's boats carrying people attempting to reach Europe.

Onward, Migrant Horde!

"We found that people had other destinations, but they were being compelled only to come to New York City, and we are assisting in interviewing those who seek to go somewhere else."

"Some want to go to Canada, some want to go to warmer states, and we are there for them as they continue to move on with their pursuit of this dream."

New York City Mayor Eric Adams

 

"A lot of the Americans used drugs there. I feel like Canada will be safer. It is a much quieter country than America."

"It is very difficult to get papers in America. I need to work, so I am going to Canada."

Migrant Manuel Rodon, 26, Venezuelan

 

"The military gave me and my family free bus tickets"

" I am going to Canada for a better quality of life for my family."

Migrant Raymond Pena, Venezuelan

 

"Word has spread among the migrant community [that Canada - where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau touted the country's] proud and longstanding tradition of welcoming people seeking safety [is the place to go]."

“Mayor Eric Adams’s administration pays various companies that run programs for migrants that include ‘re-ticketing’ so they can travel to other cities, a City Hall source said."

New York Post

Recent immigrants to the United States talk to city officials in front of the Watson Hotel in New York, Monday, Jan. 30, 2023. The immigrants, mostly from Venezuela and other Latin American countries, had been living in the hotel until recently, when they were told to leave the temporary shelter. Photo by Seth Wenig /AP

 U.S. States adjacent the border with Mexico developed a strategy whereby they bus illegal migrants that enter their states, deep into the heart of the United States, to Democratic states that have been sanctimoniously condemnatory of their Republican brother-states unwilling to absorb the ongoing presence of increasing numbers of seemingly unstoppable illegal entrants to the United States. To solve their own problems partially and to stamp 'pay-back', bus loads of migrants have been arriving in New York City which now claims it has no space left to house and care for the migrants.

And while New York City is understandably enraged over the perfidy of Texas sending illegal migrants onward to become their problem, the city has discovered a nifty new way of alleviating their own problem. By doing precisely what Texas has been engaged in. Only they're not sending the migrants back to Texas, they're floating the benefits of entering Canada to claim asylum there where they can find a new prosperous and secure life in a country built on immigration.

Immigration, that is, not illegal entry of unauthorized migrants. The way to enter any country as a desired destination is and always has been legally. Applying for visas, applying to become an immigrant. Canada invests millions in accepting immigrants from all over the world. It has an economy dependent on a labour force, but an aging population, one that is not replacing itself by natural means, with a steadily falling birthrate. Immigration to Canada has been averaging a third of a million people annually. 

Asylum seekers talk to a police officer as they cross into Canada from the U.S. border near a checkpoint on Roxham Road near Hemmingford, Quebec, April 24, 2022. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi

 

 Canada has its own problems in absorption of such huge numbers. Settling them in is extremely costly on the social welfare system, the universal medicare system, and the fact that there is insufficient public housing for people as things stand now, and housing is scarce and prohibitively expensive. The health care system has taken a beating since the pandemic and is having problems catching up to the level of service considered minimal. Adding tens of thousands of unwanted people entering illegally to declare the need for haven comes at a rather awkward time, to say the least.

But those buses from New York taking passengers representing illegal migrants to the border with Canada keep coming. And only now is it being revealed that delivering passengers by cab companies who take over as the buses debus the passengers, to enable them to access illegal entry border areas, bypassing official entry points continues. To the sum of an average of 39,000 annual illegal entries to Quebec alone, in the past several years.

Taxi drivers wait for migrants at the Plattsburgh terminus with signs indicating they will drive to Roxham Road. (Romain Schué/Radio-Canada)

Reports have emerged that migrants resort to tearing up their American immigration documents as they travel from Plattsburgh, New York, to the Canadian border. Christine Frechette, Quebec's immigration minister, "surprised" to discover the plan hatched by New York City, turns to the federal government to reach a solution to the problem at Roxham Road, used as an unofficial border crossing south of Montreal, enabling tens of thousands to cross into Canada to claim asylum. These asylum-seekers are not turned away; by Canadian law they complete documents that will be assessed and either accepted or rejected. In the meanwhile, they are able to live in Canada, assisted by social services.

In cities like Toronto, temporary housing for the homeless is being compromised as are other levels of social services by illegal migrants requiring similar assistance. If New York City finds itself overwhelmed by the burden of caring for tens of thousands of migrants whose human needs cannot be ignored, it must realize that cities like Montreal and Toronto face the same dilemma; disingenuously Mayor Adams claims to be just 'helping' the migrants get on in life . The idea being, to pass on the problems rather than face them and strategize a solution.

 

Luggage from migrants fills a pathway at an illegal crossing point from Champlain, N.Y., to Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Que.. Quebec's immigration minister says she's surprised by reports that the City of New York is helping to provide free bus tickets to migrants heading north to claim asylum in Canada. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP Photo/Charles Krupa

 

 

The Helpless Plight of Tafficked Migrants

"Exploiting vulnerable individuals for profit is shameful, as is political grandstanding around tragedy, and my administration will continue to do everything possible to stop human smugglers and traffickers from taking advantage of people who are seeking to enter the United States between ports of entry."

U.S. President Joe Biden

 

"They had just parked it [the truck] on the side of the road."

"Apparently [the truck] had mechanical problems and [the driver and his co-smugglers] left it there."

"The sheriff thinks it came across from Laredo."

Bexar Country Judge Nelson Wolff

The abandoned truck was discovered after a nearby worker heard cries for help   Getty Images

 

Difficult to fathom even with the tension involved in engaging in an illegal act, that anyone knowing there are scores of people, including children, in the back of the truck they're diving panicking -- their first impulse to put as much distance between themselves and the impaired truck with its helpless passengers -- in a belated effort to divorce themselves from what comes next. Discovery of course, coming next, apprehension by policing authorities for being involved in a human smuggling racket. 

 

And in that moment of 'escape', failing to consider the impact on the doomed people locked inside the trailer. They could just as easily and humanely unlocked the trailer doors to release the people within from the heat trap that eventually took their lives. They had already entered the United States, which was their goal. The people could have dispersed, making their way to an eventual destination. They would certainly have received help from others along the way. Instead, they were consigned to death.

It was a city worker that raised the alert after hearing a cry for help from the truck that had been left on a remote back road outside San Antonio, Texas. He opened the doors to the trailer and made that grisly discovery. When police arrived, efforts at restoring life to some of the people who had succumbed to heat prostration, suffocating in the airless trailer, sent some people to hospital. While forty-six people were discovered to be beyond help at the scene, another four after being hospitalized died there. 

Mourners visit the isolated Texas road where the abandoned truck was found with dozens of dead people inside  Getty Images

 

There were 39 men and 11 women among the dead who were left in the back of an abandoned tractor-trailer where there was no way forward for the trapped people looking for opportunity and a new life, to disengage from their situation. Two Guatemalen boys, ages 13 and 14 were among the dead. Those who died "Were likely trying to find a better life. This is nothing short of a horrific human tragedy", observed San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg.

The countries of origin of the migrants have not yet been fully identified, nor how long the unfortunate migrants had been abandoned to certain death. What is known is that twenty-two came from Mexico, seven from Guatemala, and two from Honduras, another two from El Salvador, according to Roberto Velasco Alvarez, head of Mexico's Foreign Relations Department, North America department.

The driver of the truck, identified as Homero Zamo, evidently made an attempt to pose as a victim, hiding in nearby bushes, before he was arrested. To the present, the total death toll is now 53 with several more of the migrants trapped in the truck having died in hospital. Minors are among the people who remain in hospital. In addition to the detention in police custody of the driver, another two Mexican men have been detained as accomplices.

 

Risking Life for a New Life

"The investigation into the death of the four individuals in Canada is ongoing along with an investigation into a larger human smuggling operation."

Affidavit, John Stanley, special agent, U.S.Homeland Security

"[The agency] deeply regrets the tragic loss of life."

"Whatever the circumstances, no one should ever have to choose such a perilous journey."

Rema Jamous Imseis, Canada representative, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

 

"They believe that that's the only country [the United States] that has a lot of opportunities." 

"And there's [an] envy factor that [makes them think], 'That person can go to … that particular country. Why not me?' So they would land here and then they try to, you know, go back to or travel to [the] U.S. and migrate there, right? That's their motivation." 

 "But they don't realize the fact that Canada has equal opportunities, right? And they can make their life here, too."    

"They may not have realized the fact that walking so long a distance is not practically feasible."

Akhil Shah, president, Friends of Gujarat, Brampton, Ontario

Four people, one an infant, were found dead in a Manitoba field near the Canada-U.S. border, on Wednesday. A U.S. Homeland Security agent believes they may have been victims of a wider human smuggling operation. (Submitted by RCMP)

 

Canada signed an agreement in 2004 with the United States that asylum seekers who attempt entry to Canada from the United States at an official border crossing are sent back to the U.S. and vice versa, each being recognized as a safe country to seek asylum in; those declaring themselves refugees are meant to remain in the first country accessed. 

 

On the other hand, those deliberately bypassing official border crossings to declare themselves refugees when they're apprehended by Canadian law agents like the RCMP are escorted into Canada and invited to file a refugee claim, and to remain in Canada while their claim is being processed -- to be either accepted or denied on the basis of assessed claim merit. 

Canada was intercepting thousands of people from Africa and Haiti and the Middle East during a period of several years when haven-seeking refugee claimants -- but mostly migrants -- were passing from the United States in to Canada, at a time when the U.S. was attempting to come to grips with the millions of illegals living underground in America.

Recently, even while the U.S. is attempting to cope with tens of thousands mostly Central American migrants and haven seekers on their southern border with Mexico, a small number of aspirants to enter the U.S. from Canada has drawn attention from U.S. border agents and Homeland Security. What has spotlighted this new border incursion event is the discovery of four members of a family from India found frozen to death just over the border from northern Manitoba attempting to enter the U.S.

At this time of year, freezing temperatures and frequent blizzards become threats to human life. The family, comprised of two adults, a teenager and a baby, became disoriented, had no idea where they were or where they were heading, and succumbed to the severe cold, dying on an isolated patch of snow-covered ground in a sparsely populated area. They had walked for hours, were exhausted and died of exposure.

They were headed for Minnesota with the expectation they would meet at an assigned destination where they would be picked up and driven to an appointed place. American investigators have arrested and charged 47-year-old Steve Shand of Florida with human smuggling. He was driving a 15-passenger rental van from the airport in Minneapolis. At the time that agents stopped the van five other Indian nationals were nearby having "walked across the border expecting to be picked up by someone on the U.S. side", after having walked for 11 hours.

Human smuggling experts say the initial investigation and arrest connected to a family being found frozen to death near the U.S. border points to a “sophisticated operation.”  John Woods/The Canadian Press

Beating the Record Heat

"Toronto Public Health is warning people to stay cool, so we need cool places for the homeless to go, not just shopping malls, libraries and community centres, which are not open 24-7."
"Heat is hard on peoples' health, especially if they have heart disease, diabetes, or other chronic health conditions, or if they're on psychiatric medication."
Cathy Crowe, street nurse, visiting professor, Ryerson University

"In extreme heat, cooling centres offer respite to many experiencing homelessness or inadequate housing -- and can be a lifesaver."
"More than one 24-hour cooling centre in the city would assist more people suffering in these conditions."
"The city and the province must commit to build housing that is truly affordable so low-income people are not forced to live in unsafe and precarious conditions."
Bahar Shadpour, spokesperson, Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario

"[Toronto Mayor John Tory] has led council in expanding Toronto';s shelter and respite system so that anyone who needs shelter in our city can find it."
"Despite this unprecedented demand for homeless services [with the recent influx of undocumented illegal arrivals], the city has been providing shelter to those who need it, including refugee claimants and asylum seekers who occupy more than 40 percent of the shelter system."
"Mayor Tory has been very clear about the need for the federal and provincial governments to help with the shelter demands of refugee claimants."
Don Peat, spokesperson for Toronto Mayor John Tory

Toronto’s Metro Hall provides an air-conditioned refuge for those looking to escape the heat. ((Timothy Neesam/CBC))

GreaterToronto, Canada's most densely populated and largest city accommodates the presence of 5.5 million people. Over the past forty years the city has grown by leaps and bounds. Not necessarily resulting from a high birth rate, but from the intake of a large immigrant population entering the country of which Toronto absorbs an estimated 150,000 annually. And added to that number is the additional tens of thousands who arrive as refugees, topped by illegal migrant seekers filtering across the border into Canada from the United States.

Canada is comprised of a vast land mass. As such it is the second largest country on the planet, after Russia. It occupies the northern half of North America, above the United States and Mexico to its south, bordered by the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans. With a general population having reached 36 million (fewer people than occupy the U.S. State of California) there is room for an increased population base in a country that has been built on immigration, where people have come to live from all corners of the world.

Its social resources, however, are not infinite. The capacity to shelter, feed, provide medical care and schooling for so many entrants remains a challenge. The economy must grow to accommodate such needs. And the burden of providing all these social resources falls on those already established in the country. And it is a burden that becomes overtaxed when unplanned-for entrants in their tens of thousands flood the country's borders to declare themselves refugees when their true status is often that of economic migrants who choose to enter illegally.

Both Toronto and Montreal are struggling to accommodate the needs of unexpected arrivals as Canada celebrates its 151st birthday as a nation. As it happens a heat wave of record-breaking proportions has been baking Ontario and Quebec for several days with temperatures in the low- to mid-30s and humidity making the heat resemble what would be felt with ten additional degrees of heat. Outreach workers in the city tasked to work with the most vulnerable populations, the homeless, speak of people struggling to adapt to the heat.

Toronto is expected to experience five straight days of heat and humidity, Environment Canada predicts. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)

Daytime highs of 35C, plus high humidity is making life miserable during "the most significant heat event in the past few years", as Environment Canada describes the situation. The city maintains cooling centres to assist people suffering in over-heated conditions; seven such centres, and one open 24 hours a day, along with 180 air-conditioned locations inclusive of libraries and community centres, added to respite centres offering meals, overnight cots and other social programs.

Outreach workers are on the job checking on clients and offering transportation, providing cooling, potable water seven days a week, twenty-four hours daily for the length of the heat wave. According to the mayor's spokesman, 6,534 people are taking advantage of homeless shelters, with an additional 541 being accommodated for greater needs, in respite sites.

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