Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow tours church housing refugees, calls on feds to visit

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow is calling on newly minted federal cabinet members to visit churches that have been housing refugees and asylum-seekers in recent weeks.

Speaking in front of makeshift beds set up at a church in Toronto’s north end, Chow invited Immigration Minister Marc Miller and Housing Minister Sean Fraser, both appointed to new roles this week, to tour the facilities she called “unsuitable” for dealing with the crisis.

Chow also called on the feds to hold up their end of a tripartite agreement with the province to match the city’s contributions to the Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit.

She says a limited amount of short-term funding from the feds helped create 250 shelter hotel spaces, but those spaces are already at capacity and the funds have been used up.

The federal government had recently earmarked $97 million to help shelter asylum claimants in Toronto.

Chow said Toronto needs at least $160 million to $200 million in order to find long-term solutions given its stretched-out shelter capacity, but says those solutions will be cheaper in the long term.

She also called for the immediate creation of an intake centre near the airport where refugees and asylum-seekers can be connected with shelter options and services in one accessible place.

“This is not a reception centre, this is a church. It’s a church where people pray, get married, have funerals … All of that cancelled because they are stepping up,” she said, adding praise for the Black and African-Canadian communities who arranged the temporary shelters, as well as donors.

“People are opening up their hearts, they are opening up their wallets. We are asking the federal government that you also need to do the same.”

Chow apologized on behalf of the city and other levels of government for the ways refugees seeking shelter have been treated in recent weeks and the lack of dignity they experienced.

Earlier in the day, activists and representatives from refugee centres rallied at Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s Toronto office after she rejected calls for more federal assistance to address the city’s massive budget shortfall.

Freeland deferred responsibility to the Ontario government, stating the province has the fiscal capacity and constitutional responsibility to support Toronto.