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canada’s premiers have been telling trudeau for the past few months that, regardless of the validity of their assertions, asylum seekers cost taxpayers a great deal of money.
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stories of an out-of-control refugee system are likely contributing to fast-changing opinion poll results. last week leger discovered 60 per cent of canadians now think there are “too many” newcomers. that’s a huge shift from just 35 per cent in 2019.
it’s the highest rate of dissatisfaction in decades — based in part on demand pressure on housing and infrastructure costs. the negative polling result is consistent across both white and non-white canadians.
in response to complaints out of quebec, trudeau has this year coughed up $750 million more for that province to support refugee claimants who arrived in recent years, mostly at the land border. last year quebec dealt with a total of 65,000 claims and ontario with 63,000, with the largest cohorts from mexico and india .
“our most recent total for last year was 180,000 new british columbians,” eby said last month , including asylum seekers among all international migrants to the province. “and that’s great and that’s exciting and it’s necessary, and it’s completely overwhelming.”
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eby didn’t even publicly mention the increasingly bizarre anomaly, based on the three-decades-old quebec accord, which each year leads to quebec getting 10 times more funding than b.c. and ontario to settle newcomers.
postmedia news has found metro vancouver’s shelters are being overwhelmed by the near-doubling of asylum seekers in b.c. in the past year.
government statistics show b.c. is now home to 16,837 asylum claimants, says meggs. that doesn’t include the 5,300 who last year arrived in the province on a more orderly track as government-assisted refugees .
in an article in inroads magazine, a social policy journal, meggs says her ”jaw dropped” when trudeau said in april the number of temporary immigrants, including asylum seekers, was “out of control” and “growing at a rate far beyond what canada has been able to absorb.”
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trudeau has admitted chaos particularly characterizes the dilemma with international students, whose numbers have tripled under his reign to 1.1 million. many are now claiming asylum. b.c. has 217,000 foreign students in post-secondary institutions and another 49,000 in kindergarten-to-grade-12 programs.
vancouver immigration lawyer richard kurland is among those suggesting it would be best if canada processed about 50,000 refugee claimants a year , since it doesn’t have absorptive capacity for more — like the 144,000 who applied last year.
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even though meggs isn’t optimistic about the future of asylum-seeker policy in canada, at least the premiers and public are making noises. the thing is, given the liberals’ defensiveness , it’s just far too soon to tell if their criticism will inspire not empty words but authentic change.
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