Juno News - November 01, 2018
Trudeau's government created homeless refugee crisis
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Summary
As the weather gets colder, more and more people are starting to pay attention to the homelessness problem that is so pervasive in cities and towns across Canada. Andrew Lutton talks about the root cause of the problem, and why it is the fault of the federal government.
Transcript
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As the weather gets colder a lot more people are starting to pay attention to
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the homelessness problem that is so pervasive in cities and towns across
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Canada. Ottawa is no exception. Ottawa did a survey of about 1,400 homeless and
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impoverished people on its streets and found something very concerning. One
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quarter of them are refugees or immigrants. Now this is one of the first
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surveys that's ever been done of its kind according to a global news report.
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But of the 1,400 surveyed, one quarter were immigrants or refugees. People that
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have been in the country for as many as two years and are already finding
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themselves on the streets. Now this is tragic and also the unavoidable byproduct
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of a fundamental mishandling of the refugee file in Canada.
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When the government was prioritizing publicly sponsored refugees instead of
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privately sponsored refugees, the government was making a determination to
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bring more people into this country that we know have a more difficult time
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learning the language, finding footing and yes maintaining housing.
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So this is a problem entirely of the federal government's creation
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because Justin Trudeau wanted to put the number ahead of the actual program.
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He wanted to brag about how many refugees we brought into the country
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instead of actually focusing on the quality of what Canada could actually accommodate
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and what the people in Canadian communities were actually prepared to do.
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And so much of this could have been prevented if the privately sponsoring groups
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had the opportunity to sponsor as many refugees as they wanted.
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Church groups, mosques, community groups, synagogues, individual families that
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wanted to actually bring people in to support them and help them reintegrate and
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integrate into Canada and the federal government said to them no we can do it better.
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Now we also have to look a couple of years down the line here because this is not going to be
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the end of this problem nor is it going to be the biggest the problem is going to get
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when you've got so many people who are coming into the country illegally now
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that are going on to social assistance while they wait for their refugee or asylum claims to be heard.
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Which means that as more of people who are in that demographic group of not being adequately able
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to look after themselves for whatever reason well all of a sudden the country is going to have
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more of a ballooning of the homelessness crisis and this is the government's fault.
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For the True North Initiative, I'm Andrew Lutton.