Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland said he was also confused by the program suspension, calling it 'the wrong message at the wrong time.' Mr. Kurland poses for a photograph in Vancouver on Feb. 27, 2018.The Canadian Press
The suspension last month of nearly all private refugee sponsorships in Canada has blindsided community groups who have helped resettle thousands of people in the decade since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau led the global charge to help those fleeing Syria.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said in a Nov. 29 news release that the decision was made “to provide more certainty to refugees abroad and sponsors in Canada.”
The Private Sponsorship of Refugees program, which has existed since 1979, allows private groups to sponsor refugees, providing funding and housing, and getting them access to health care, schools and job opportunities during their first year in Canada.
The program was given high-profile attention in 2015 when Mr. Trudeau’s newly elected government pushed Canada to welcome more than 25,000 Syrians who were fleeing an escalating civil war and a brutal crackdown by Bashar al-Assad.
Vania Davidovic, 61, has been heavily involved in efforts to resettle Syrian refugees, working directly with roughly 50 people over the years. She said the federal government’s announcement came without a warning or a grace period.
“I have friends who were submitting to sponsor their own family members who had money fundraised, who had forms filled in, and maybe were just waiting to submit the case and now it’s all gone. It’s all gone. They are devastated,” she said.
The success of the refugee program has been brought into sharp relief this month as the collapse of Mr. al-Assad’s regime in Syria has caused many of those who came to Canada to reflect on their experiences.
The pause puts the program on hold for all those but sponsorship agreement holders – organizations, often religious or humanitarian, that have an agreement with the federal government allowing them to sponsor refugees.
According to an IRCC report published this year, just over half of the 207,060 refugees admitted to Canada between 2016 and 2022 came through private sponsorship. A third of them were Syrian.
Refugees are also admitted to Canada through a separate, government-assisted program, which remains in place. However, academic and government studies suggest the private sponsorship program contributes to better settlement outcomes.
Ms. Davidovic has witnessed this difference.
“I’ve seen how little support, close to none, they actually got – aside from the fact that they were given status, which was nice,” she said. “But you drop a people from [a] different culture and country and you tell them, ‘This is your apartment, you’re getting mattresses and one table, and now go figure out [your] life,’ they were lost. A lot of government-sponsored refugees were lost.”
Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland said he was also confused by the program suspension, calling it “the wrong message at the wrong time.”
“It’s 180 degrees from what Canada stood for in the 80s and 70s and beyond for 40 years,” he said.
IRCC said the pause is intended to alleviate the backlog of applications from private sponsors. Mr. Kurland pointed to the underresourcing of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, the body that makes decisions on refugee matters, as the source of the delays, which can be years long.
Unaudited financial statements posted to the board’s website show that net cash provided by the government more than doubled from 2016 to 2023. However, over the same period, the number of refugee cases referred to the Refugee Protection Division rose to 137,947 from 23,350, around six times higher. The number of pending claims has also ballooned, rising to 156,032 from 17,537, approximately nine times more.
As a Syrian living in Lebanon, Basel Dakak, 36, had to navigate this backlog firsthand. In 2015, Mr. Dakak, who is queer, started the process of trying to come to Canada as a refugee. He filed a claim for refugee status with the United Nations Refugee Agency in Lebanon, which is required by Canada’s government-assisted program. Mr. Dakak waited several years before deciding to pursue entry to Canada through the private sponsorship program in 2019.
He arrived in 2021, not through either program but with his partner, who has dual Lebanese and Canadian citizenship. He noted that few people have this privilege.
Mr. Dakak now works as a project co-ordinator for the Canadian Council for Refugees. He said the decision to halt the private sponsorship program has “absolutely shattered a lot of people’s hopes and dreams to come to a country where they feel safe.”
“As someone who tried to come as a refugee, I understand very well how this kind of decision affects people back home, people living in uncertainty,” he said.