Toronto / August 2025
Our Refugee Determination system is in crisis with significant backlogs. Our affordable housing crisis continues and the two together have created a perfect storm. We are seeing it manifested on the streets and in the emergency shelters of large urban centres in Ontario like Ottawa and the Greater Toronto (Peel, York, Durham) and Hamilton region.
The summer of 2023 was a massive heads-up as we witnessed hundreds of refugee claimants from the global south, but primarily from Africa sleeping on make-shift beds on sidewalks outside the central intake housing office and the emergency shelters in Peel region. Two - as reported - died from exposure to the elements and untreated illness.
Black and other Faith communities stepped up. I recall visiting the basement of one of these first responding churches and marveling at the controlled chaos, as community residents arrived with all manner of donations from food to personal hygiene supplies and were pressed into service as volunteers, as many hands and hearts were needed.
Fast forward two years. During the last couple of years, the federal government stepped up with plans to ease the burden on downtown Toronto by relocating refugee claimants to regions outside of the GTHA like Niagara and its surrounding regions. In the wider Toronto regions- Peel, Durham, York and Hamilton, the crisis was growing. Hotels were overflowing. Confusion reigned as false information and false promises made its rounds.
OCASI members working with community partners, legal and health professionals and with government worked hard to make it all make sense. To ease as much as they could the trauma of displacement and houselessness for the thousands in search of a home. The system hastily put in place was imperfect but met basic needs of a shelter and services.
In Toronto proper, the non-refugee homeless population continue to grow, keeping up the pressure on homeless shelters. Many (refugees, asylum-seekers, unhoused Canadians) in the shelters who are aware of the various housing supports like the Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit (COHB) remained in the shelters until such time that they are qualified for the program or funds became available. This created significant bottle-necks exacerbating the situation.
Toronto and other municipalities expended significant funds in attempts to address the ongoing crisis of refugee claimant housing on the promise of repayment by the federal government, which has ultimate responsibility for asylum-seekers/refugee claimants.
Service agencies were seeing an increase in demand for services at the same time that the province had flat-lined sector service funding (NSP –Newcomer Settlement Program), and the federal government (IRCC) had unexpectedly cut funding through the new 2025-2028 funding agreements. These cuts to services and funding of course resulted in the cuts to staffing, adding to the pressure that agencies are experiencing. In a survey of OCASI members about the IRCC cuts, up to 49% of Toronto agencies reported staffing cuts while on the other end of the spectrum, 4% of Northern region (Thunder Bay, the Sault, North Bay, Sudbury, etc.) reported expected reduction in staffing. Sixty-nine percent of respondents across the province reported that their general settlement program was negatively impacted by the cuts.
The United Way of Greater Toronto in partnership with the City of Toronto and OCASI also undertook a survey that mirrored the concerns heard from OCASI members across the province. A report is to be released soon.
It is within this context of cuts and increased service demands; the worsening housing affordability crisis and a nascent refugee claimant shelters ecosystem, that the long-awaited news from the federal government on the Interim Housing Assistance Program (IHAP) was received.
Ironically, the news of the significant shortfall to the IHAP funding for the City of Toronto, made the mainstream media news on the same day that the City was commemorating Undocumented Residents Day – acknowledging their plight and reconfirming the City’s commitment to being a sanctuary city, a place where all residents regardless of immigration status should be able to and can access municipally funded services.
The City received less than half of the funds it requested, a shortfall of over $100M. And to add insult to injury, the funds are back-ended to year two when there is an expectation of reduced numbers of asylum seekers due to the current immigration caps and the introduction of Bill C2 which aims to shut off most pathways to asylum and protection.
Peel region, where the largest transitional shelter for refugee claimants came into operation over the last year or so, fared better and received about 96% of requested funds. All municipalities receiving IHAP supports other than Toronto will receive the majority of their funds in year one of the two-year agreement. There is one new region which is coming on, Simcoe in south central Ontario. As far as we can tell, this is very new with no existing shelter infrastructure.
The IHAP program has a budget of approximately $650M. The program will end in March 2027. What then? What are municipalities supposed to do?
This is the beginning of the new federal government austerity agenda. It is already having an impact on our communities, on our social safety net, including services for refugees and immigrants. It is resulting in the shrinking of our labour force, leaving many with precarious work contracts or unemployed. Our sector is over eighty percent women and highly racialized. A significant number of workers are immigrants themselves.
How can we respond?
This is a time for collaboration across sectors. It is also a time for a new and robust government relations strategy. We need to engage all levels of government and across party lines. We need to centre the voices of those most impacted- service users and employees. We must demonstrate how our sector and the communities we work with and for are integral to the social and economic fabric of our cities, provinces and country.
We must fight against the xenophobic dog whistles of nationalism and protectionism. We must remember and uphold our international obligations while ensuring that those most marginalized economically and socially here at home are informing our domestic economic and social policies.
On September 20th, find a Draw The Line event near you and add your voice to saying a loud no to regressive policies and practices by those we’ve elected to politically lead us.
In Solidarity.