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Regina City Council prepares for refugees ahead of federal announcement

REGINA – At Monday’s city council meeting Mayor Michael Fougere tabled a motion to have city administration draft a report on what services/resources are available for Syrian refugees.

This comes after Fougere, and mayors from across Canada, spent Monday morning in a conference call with Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship John McCallum.

“Well I think it’s important that we state as a community that we’re ready to assist local organizations to receive refugees from around the world, from the Middle East,” Fougere said after the council meeting.

“It’s important to let people know we will do what we can to support them.”

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Council voted unanimously to support the report.

Fougere said that as of Monday night he doesn’t know how many of the planned 25,000 Syrian refugees will be coming to the Regina area, but that information will be coming soon.

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“[McCallum’s] making an announcement [Tuesday] on the details of the plan itself,” Fougere said in relation to the conference call.

Fougere said the call was mostly to gauge any questions mayors may have ahead of the arrival of refugees concerning housing, social services and security.

“There was a fair amount of discussion on the security screening going forward. There’s five steps of security they’ll be doing,” said the mayor.

Fougere said as a whole the call was a general conversation on refugees and no firm numbers were revealed.

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