A growing number of GTA regions are accusing higher governments of stranding them with the costs of sheltering refugees and asylum seekers — with some announcing shelter closures in response.
The cries for help come as Toronto has been locked in its own funding clash with the federal government, a dispute that. On Friday morning, representatives of social services such as refugee centres, hospitals and drop-in centres are expected to gather there to press elected officials to take action.
His remarks join a chorus of budgetary alarm bells from other jurisdictions. North of Toronto, in York Region, community and health services commissioner Katherine Chislett wrote a report on May 30 stating that — effective July 1 — the region would stop intake at a shelter for those fleeing the war in Ukraine, and would begin moving residents elsewhere to close it down. Other shelters for Ukrainian refugees were expected to close in Peel and Durham, she wrote.
In practice, newcomers to Toronto have since been left sleeping outside the city’s street outreach referral centre at Peter and Richmond streets. One man — a 26-year-old who arrived from Uganda two weeks earlier and “We can’t leave people outside while we do the administrative work to find out where and how it’s going to get funded,” she told the Star last week. “Budgets aside, these are people. We don’t want to retraumatize somebody who’s trying to make a new life for themselves, and be safe, and flee whatever they’re fleeing.”
“Growing numbers of asylum seekers and special visa holders from multiple countries are arriving in Canada in need of supports. Municipalities are increasingly being drawn into these responses without additional federal funding,” Baird wrote at the time, noting that Peel was using money from its Regional Tax Rate Stabilization Fund to pay for temporary accommodations for Ukrainian refugees.
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