Juno News - April 01, 2023


Niagara Falls mayor says feds are bungling asylum seekers

Topics
asylum seekers
Mentioned
Niagara Falls Andrew Lawton Show Jim Diodati Drew Dilkens Roxham Road
Nova Scotia mass casualty commission says government must ＂promote healthy masculinities＂ The state of the conservative movement

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

188.77

Word count

1,712

Sentence count

114

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati joins me on the show to talk about the growing number of asylum seekers in his city, the challenges he and his team are facing, and what the federal government should do about it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I want to talk about another dimension of this, which I feel is the part of the story that's not as often told, and that is the local dimension, because these are local communities that oftentimes have had to deal with this influx, which isn't just at Roxham Road, but I think all around Ontario and Quebec near the New York-Vermont border.
00:00:26.540 I want to welcome onto the show the Mayor of Niagara Falls, Jim Diodati. Your Worship, good to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on today.
00:00:35.280 Thanks for having me, Andrew.
00:00:36.720 So this is not often, because it's immigration, been seen as a municipal issue, but in your city it really has been one.
00:00:43.960 Yeah, it was something that just kind of happened to us. It started out pretty mild last summer.
00:00:50.840 They brought 87 people to Niagara Falls, and they said they'd be asylum seekers staying in town.
00:00:57.120 They'd be part of the federal government's program just to kind of keep it low-key, and we did, and it seemed pretty nefarious.
00:01:04.900 And next thing, we went from 87 to 387 to 600 to 1,200.
00:01:10.600 You know, we're up over 2,000 rooms now and upwards of more than 5,000 asylum seekers here in Niagara Falls.
00:01:17.520 So for a community of 95,000, when more than 5% are asylum seekers, that's a big number.
00:01:24.560 That's an overnight impact, and it's been difficult because we're trying to absorb the social services, Ontario Works, and all the other things that go with it.
00:01:33.800 And I've been on regular conversations with IRCC as well as the province today just trying to sort out our role in this matter.
00:01:42.740 And again, let me start by saying, Andrew, I know we're a nation of immigrants. We get that, and I know generally these are good people coming from bad situations.
00:01:50.300 We're grateful to do our part, but we feel that we're doing more than our fair share, and we need a little bit of help.
00:01:56.660 Well, no, and I think that's a point well taken, Mayor, because when you talk about the broader landscape,
00:02:01.420 you could find the immigration numbers and divide it into a country of 38 million, and it doesn't sound that bad.
00:02:07.220 But when you look at the fact that so much of that is concentrated along border communities, it does change the dynamic.
00:02:13.600 And Niagara Falls in particular is a lovely place. It's a tourist city.
00:02:17.160 You've probably got better use for a lot of the hotel rooms that you have there.
00:02:21.000 And it just, it occurs to me as you were talking with that, have you actually had issues where hotel occupancy rates have been artificially inflated and elevated,
00:02:29.320 and you don't actually have room to accommodate the tourist demand?
00:02:33.040 Well, you know, that's a great question, and yes.
00:02:35.620 So, of course, it's the economic model of supply and demand.
00:02:38.880 And we've got big inventory, and in the shoulder season, a lot of it's vacant during the week.
00:02:43.440 So it seemed like a natural place.
00:02:45.340 And, of course, a lot of the hotel years were happy to grab the extra money.
00:02:48.020 It was easy money, but we're already running into challenges.
00:02:50.840 We've got major tour groups, major events that bring in significant amounts of people that are getting very, very frustrated.
00:02:57.740 They've reached out to our office.
00:02:59.000 Some said they're going to leave the city.
00:03:00.800 I can tell you, too, Andrew, we've had some situations, and this is some of the unintended negative outcomes of a good idea.
00:03:07.740 We've had some of our local Niagara homeless who public health have put up in our local motels who have been evicted to make room for asylum seekers.
00:03:15.960 So, you know, you try to solve a problem, and it's not by creating another problem or kicking the can down the road.
00:03:22.040 So I asked three things of the federal government.
00:03:24.240 Number one, I asked that we have a seat at the table.
00:03:26.780 I said we need to be part of the discussion if we're going to help with the solution.
00:03:30.100 And we are the boots on the ground.
00:03:31.740 We're telling them things, some things they did not know, they weren't aware, because we're the front line.
00:03:36.400 So I said give us a seat at the table.
00:03:38.040 We're here to help.
00:03:39.160 Second thing, we need money.
00:03:40.380 The federal government is going to have to pay some of the bills here, our peripheral expenses.
00:03:45.420 I mean, our food bank, our soup kitchen is up 85%.
00:03:48.880 You know, our local community groups, the churches, mosques, temples, and whatnot are giving coats, boots, hats, gloves, and things like that.
00:03:55.960 So secondly, the second request is for money.
00:03:58.460 And third thing is we'd like to be made privy to the plan or plans.
00:04:02.000 And I know they're evolving, emerging, and they're changing, and we get that.
00:04:06.120 But tell us what the plan is.
00:04:08.700 Hope can't be the strategy.
00:04:10.500 We need a physical plan because my bigger concern, Andrew, is, you know, I've got this one train coming down the track of thousands of silent seekers, and I've got this other train coming down the other track. 1.00
00:04:19.840 We've got 14 million tourists coming back.
00:04:22.320 So we don't want to have a problem.
00:04:24.480 We want everyone to land softly.
00:04:26.480 And in Niagara Falls, we're the number one leisure destination in Canada.
00:04:29.540 40,000 people count on tourism to feed their families, to pay the rent, pay the mortgage, and they're counting on a recovery season.
00:04:37.740 We were devastated by COVID.
00:04:39.480 Last year, domestic tourism returned to pre-pandemic numbers, but international, we're below half.
00:04:45.180 So now that the Arrive Can app is gone from the borders, and it's a favorable exchange rate for our American friends, this is the year of international recovery we're counting on.
00:04:55.120 And if we don't have the inventory, we're going to have some challenges.
00:04:58.000 And, I mean, when we talk about the change that came out last week to the Safe Third Country Agreement, I think, obviously, for the illegal border crossing aspect of it, there's a bit of a resolution there.
00:05:08.960 But part of the government's response to that is increasing or widening the pipeline for asylum claimants.
00:05:15.380 So the problem that you're describing in Niagara Falls is pretty much unchanged and perhaps made even worse by this change, is it not?
00:05:22.940 Well, it could be, and that's the thing.
00:05:24.960 The devil's going to be in the details, and I know that.
00:05:27.240 But I'm just glad they're addressing it, not ignoring it.
00:05:30.580 Roxham Road's a legal loophole, and it's not even fair to the other asylum seekers who are going through the proper channels because they're jumping the queue ahead of people doing it the right way. 1.00
00:05:41.320 And, you know, it's only a matter of time.
00:05:42.700 And if you look at the path of least resistance and water, we'll take that.
00:05:46.740 Wherever the low point is, wherever the opening is, that's where the water goes.
00:05:49.820 And eventually, it'll force that opening bigger until there's no water going anywhere but that place.
00:05:55.160 And that's where we were headed.
00:05:57.000 And, again, I don't know that there's any perfect solution.
00:06:00.740 It's just that we're trying to get to a better place.
00:06:03.560 And, yeah, go ahead, sir.
00:06:04.960 Yeah, I'm just curious about whether there has been a seat at the table for any of your counterparts in other municipalities because, as the old line goes, there's safety in numbers.
00:06:15.140 And I know that other communities are dealing with this.
00:06:17.620 You probably get unfairly targeted because, as you mentioned, you have the hotel inventory.
00:06:21.780 So you're more of a natural pick there.
00:06:24.160 But have other mayors in other cities really seen the same thing here?
00:06:28.180 Well, definitely not to this degree.
00:06:30.980 I speak regularly with Drew Dilkins, the mayor of Windsor, and they asked for a cap to be put on their hotel rooms.
00:06:37.320 And then they got bumped.
00:06:38.740 And Niagara Falls, we're at almost 2,000.
00:06:41.140 They added another 500 rooms this week.
00:06:43.560 So, unfortunately, some of the hoteliers see it as a great opportunity.
00:06:47.180 But we're only two months away.
00:06:49.040 Just to interject there, Mayor Diodati, so when you say they added 500, is this something that the federal government can do unilaterally just by going to the hotel and saying,
00:06:57.400 hey, we want the rooms?
00:06:58.560 Are you theoretically cut out of that discussion entirely if the government doesn't want to involve you?
00:07:04.100 We are absolutely not part of that discussion.
00:07:06.420 They're going direct.
00:07:07.300 So they're using a third-party group who's putting out requests for a proposal.
00:07:11.180 And then all the hoteliers that are interested can put in a bid.
00:07:14.620 And, of course, rates are going higher because we're getting closer to the tourism season.
00:07:18.460 And, you know, right now it's probably around $140, $150 a night for a hotel room plus $75 a day for food, three meals a day, and snacks for kids in school.
00:07:29.980 Then they get another $350 a month for incidentals.
00:07:33.620 And, you know, there's some other fees that they get.
00:07:35.520 So they're being well taken care of.
00:07:37.560 And, of course, if I'm a hotel unit, it's the shoulder season, and I can get seven-day-a-week occupancy, and I don't have to clean the room, and I don't need to be preparing meals because they're using, a lot of them are using third-party cafeteria-type meal processes.
00:07:52.420 I mean, I understand the allure of it, but it's not sustainable.
00:07:56.200 And we don't have a plan.
00:07:57.360 We don't know how long it's going to go, when it's going to end, how big it's going to get.
00:08:01.100 We don't have any of these.
00:08:02.180 Nobody really seems to have these answers.
00:08:04.180 Well, hopefully, you'll get them, and we'll have to have you back on to see if you have any luck on that.
00:08:09.460 I mean, this is not a new problem, and every time it comes up, it's like everyone asks, it's the first time they've ever had to consider it.
00:08:14.880 So I'm glad that you are on the ground and willing to share that, Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati.
00:08:20.060 Thank you so much, sir.
00:08:21.140 Thanks for having me.
00:08:21.820 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:08:24.480 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.
00:08:34.180 www.tnc.news.com