The effort to bring 10,000 Syrian refugees to Canada before the end of the year continues unabated, but the Trudeau government is running up against a ticking clock.
So far, about 40 per cent of the target has been reached, and a civil servant who was in the forefront of Canada’s last major resettlement program says it may be time to slow the pace down.
Gerry Van Kessel warns that meeting the deadlines runs the risk that shortcuts will be taken and preparations won’t be complete.
Van Kessel was the director general, refugees, for the immigration department when the Canadian government evacuated 5,000 Kosovars and fast-tracked the resettlement of more than 2,000 others over a period of several months in 1999.
He says that when he and other former immigration officials saw the government’s Syrian plan, they knew bringing over more than three times that number of people in just four months couldn’t be done.
“What’s happened since has been nothing but politics,” he says.
The Canadian government originally said it wanted to bring 25,000 refugees to Canada before the end of the year. However, logistics problems forced the government to scale back its timetable.
It now hopes to settle the 25,000 refugees by the end of February.
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