Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to speak in the House today about a very important topic, one that I think all Canadians can agree upon. That is Canada's response to the refugee crisis in the Middle East.
Certainly, I think all sides of the House, all parties, agree that this is a humanitarian crisis of great scale and one that Canada should have a role in responding to. However, the question is how do we respond to that?
During the campaign, the Liberals focused on an escalating series of numbers and landed on 25,000, and I think somewhat arbitrarily, by the end of 2015. Of course they were not able to make that commitment.
Now the question becomes how refugees are being cared for when they come to Canada.
Over recent weeks, there have been questions around the provision of affordable long-term housing, which is a big concern for many municipalities and refugee agencies, language training services, the cost associated with various programs and their sustainability, and who will bear that burden. We are seeing more and more of this. Today, there is an article posted by CBC News, entitled “Syrians 'feel hopeless' as government-sponsored refugees in Toronto”, and there is a quote from a refugee. Through a translator, the refugee said:
We were told that when we arrived to the hotel...we would only be staying for three to four days maximum. However, things have been changed and we've been here for 10 to 11 days, and we've been told it could be even longer. The problem is that we have kids and we would rather be outside in a settled house than sitting at a hotel...
A wide variety of people commented in this article, talking about the fact that the government really did not think through the plan on how it was going to manage this.
I think we will be hearing more on this, and that is very unfortunate. I think we are all willing to work with the governments on this. However, today in the House of Commons the minister responded to a question from a government member, again on the number of refugees who had come to Canada. He responded, “However, more than the numbers, we have done this well”.
That is a little blind, given the article that came out today and the reports we hear from different municipalities and agencies within these municipalities requesting pauses on the arrival of refugees. This mismanagement is very important, both when we think about accountability to Canadians as well as ensuring the success of refugees when they arrive in our country.
Last year, the government staged a photo op at Pearson Airport for the first arrivals of Syrian refugees to Canada. Given the amount of mismanagement and the overriding cost, would the government tell the House exactly how much was spent on that photo op, both for lighting, as production-quality lighting was set up there, staffing, transportation and the number of full-time equivalent hours that were put into designing the photo op? I would love to have that number. I certainly do not think the government has been forthcoming with it. Why did it decide that spending the amount of time it did on staging a photo op was more important than dealing with some of these very pressing issues, such as looking at the issue of long-term housing for refugees?