Craig Damian Smith is the co-founder of Pairity, an organization using data-driven tools to improve refugee settlement. Abdulla Daoud is the executive director of the Montreal non-profit the Refugee Centre.
In the past year, the conversation around immigration in Canada has shifted sharply. Media outlets are awash with stories on Canada’s “threatened,” “fraying,” and “crumbling” immigration consensus. Recent polling finds that almost 60 per cent of Canadians consider immigration levels too high. With concerns growing about immigrants’ impact on housing, the economy and the work force, politicians are shifting policies to re-establish public trust.
With the incoming Trump administration potentially spurring more asylum migration to Canada, it’s essential that Canadian governments co-operate to ensure our immigration system is well managed. This is key in order for Canadians to perceive immigration as providing social and economic returns for the country. A well-managed immigration system is not limited to deciding who should arrive or be invited to stay – it increasingly means easing the disproportionate impact of refugee claimants on a few big cities in Ontario and Quebec.
Refugee claims are already at an all-time high. The most recent government data show 132,525 new claims in the first three quarters of 2024, suggesting this year is on track to surpass 2023’s record of more than 143,000 – which was already more than double the roughly 60,000 in 2022. Fifty-two per cent of all 2024 claims were processed in Ontario, and 34 per cent in Quebec.
Policy solutions for asylum surges are elusive because they require intergovernmental agreement to support vulnerable people whose arrival is difficult to predict. Unlike other immigration streams, refugee claimants cannot apply overseas, and they are not included in immigration targets. Refugees tend to concentrate in major cities in Ontario and Quebec, which creates friction between different levels of government, and attempts to steer policy are open to politicization.
Indeed, consultations between the federal and provincial governments seem to have reached a stalemate. According to Immigration Minister Marc Miller, this fall some provinces left an Asylum Working Group, which was considering ways to fairly distribute claimants among provinces. The premiers of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Alberta clashed with Mr. Miller on social media about redistribution plans. In mid-September, Quebec Premier François Legault said the federal government should relocate half of his province’s refugee claimants to other provinces.
Canada’s immigration consensus has allowed for bold policies, including some, such as private refugee sponsorship, that have been emulated around the world. We have an opportunity to continue that success by reconsidering three key aspects of our response to asylum surges.
Editorial Board: The meltdown in Canada’s refugee system
First, we must recognize that refugee claimants are people with skills and agency, many of whom will take opportunities to move for stable work and housing. Second, governments and immigrant-serving organizations can harness innovative and data-driven redistribution models that consider the needs and capacities of communities struggling to retain immigrants and workers. Third, we need to understand that broad intergovernmental and social consensus is an outcome of, rather than a prerequisite for, innovative programs. In short, a group of like-minded jurisdictions and organizations with community trust and technical expertise can implement redistribution models to deliver social and economic returns.
Canada last experienced a major asylum surge in 2017, when Trump administration policies boosted arrivals at Roxham Road on the New York/Quebec border. The U.S.-Canada Safe Third Country Agreement was revised in 2023, significantly reducing irregular border crossings, but this did not affect overall numbers since most claimants arrive at airports or make inland claims after residing on other visas. Regardless of their mode of arrival, more than 80 per cent of cases decided at the Immigration and Refugee Board receive positive decisions, indicating the vast majority have well-founded protection claims and are here to stay.
Most claimants end up in large cities, particularly in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area and Montreal. Roughly half the beds in Toronto’s general shelter system are occupied by refugee claimants. In Montreal, the main reception centre for refugee claimants, PRAIDA (Programme régional d’accueil et d’intégration des demandeurs d’asile), has been at capacity since late 2021. Churches, charities and mutual-aid groups try to fill the gaps, but can’t possibly meet the growing demand.
Substantial federal emergency money has increased short-term shelter capacity but doesn’t contribute to long-term solutions or promote co-operation between provinces. Federally supported reception centres, the first of which is planned for Peel Region, will centralize service delivery, but will still keep claimants in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. Legal aid for refugee claimants – crucial for fair and efficient asylum procedures – isn’t offered in all provinces, which further incentivizes concentration in Ontario and Quebec.
Systems to redistribute refugees to new jurisdictions will be a necessary part of Canada’s policy tool kit, but international and domestic precedents have had mixed results. For example, Germany’s asylum distribution system uses quotas, with variables including municipal reception capacities, tax revenue and population. On one level, Germany’s system is fair because it avoids overwhelming a few cities, but retention largely depends on residency obligations that essentially force claimants to stay put. Refugee claimants in Canada face no similar barriers to movement, and receive work permits shortly after making a claim.
The European Union proposed a similar program to manage the 2015-16 refugee crisis and take pressure off front-line countries such as Greece. It faltered because for some countries, notably in Central and Eastern Europe, resisting top-down quotas from Brussels was politically popular. The dissolution of Canada’s Asylum Working Group followed a similar logic.
Canada’s own redistribution experiments have shown promise, but lacked momentum, given inconsistent funding, cost overruns and low political will. Recent cases, such as relocations from Quebec to Niagara Falls and New Brunswick, illustrate the shortcomings of quick triage programs. Sudden influxes strained social services and overwhelmed reception capacities, and the people relocated had little incentive to stay.
Regardless, these examples offer incremental evidence for how to do redistribution properly, highlighting the need for buy-in from local communities and better reception planning. They also demonstrate the need to take into account long-term economic outcomes as well as the needs and preferences of newcomers.
Canadian organizations have experience redistributing refugees, including our respective organizations, Pairity and the Refugee Centre. The Refugee Centre’s relocation program, Beyond the Big City, has helped hundreds of refugees and claimants relocate from Montreal to smaller towns and rural areas where employment has already been secured. Targeting areas with lower costs of living provided newcomers with job stability and community integration, while also easing the strain on shelters.
The program considers employment outcomes and cross-references public data while working with recruitment agencies, thereby creating incentives for relocation by offering pathways to economic and social stability. However, without provincial and federal buy-in, the program cannot scale beyond its current capacity.
Pairity’s work in North America and Europe uses the preferences, skills, needs and biographical information of displaced people, as well as data on costs of living, labour markets, housing and other important variables for integration. Preference-matching algorithms pair displaced people with hosts, housing, services and labour markets, depending on the context.
For example, Pairity’s Re:Match project matched several hundred Ukrainians relocating from Poland and Ukraine to German municipalities. Matching delivered better-than-average retention and employment rates, with high satisfaction from participants and municipalities. Taken together, these made-in-Canada tools offer a framework for a national redistribution system.
The first step would be to secure a few key municipalities and provinces interested in addressing labour-market shortfalls and population declines. Canada’s immigration targets already focus on attraction and retention in rural and northern regions and Atlantic provinces, which would benefit from tailored redistribution. The provinces that remained in the Asylum Working Group are an obvious place to start, but the group should also include municipalities in Ontario and Quebec, as well as industry associations and licensing bodies facing skills shortages.
The program would empower refugee claimants by inviting voluntary, consent-based participation from among those already in Canada, and divert new arrivals away from shelter systems. Claimants would share their skills, preferences and needs, which would then populate a pool of potential matches.
Algorithmic preference matching, already tested theoretically and in practice, equitably distributes available resources such as housing stock, and uses participant preferences as matching variables. Preference matching works best in high-volume settings, and so record-high refugee claims are a blessing since big numbers mean more variation in skills and experience.
Destinations will likewise have different capacities and needs. Some rural areas may not have shelter capacity, but more available jobs matched with claimant skills. Others may have reception capacity for specific types of people or services for job retraining. As with a high volume of claimants, algorithms can optimize for Canada’s different contexts, rather than being hindered by them.
Data-driven redistribution would also monitor outcomes, including retention, integration and social well-being. A pilot cohort of a few hundred matches could be followed closely, and provide hard evidence for return on investment and scalability to manage future surges.
People seeking safety will arrive regardless of attempts to keep them away. A more effective, humane and fiscally responsible solution will include redistribution with a focus on public gains. This is just one part of the puzzle of building a sustainable settlement infrastructure that allows Canada to uphold our humanitarian commitments, support and retain immigrants and promote healthy integration in our communities.