No Place: Asylum Seekers & Migrant Housing Deadlock in Canada

Full Panel
Transcript

Note to readers: This video session was transcribed using auto-transcribing software.  Questions or concerns with the transcription can be directed to events@canurb.org with “transcription” in the subject line.

Mary W Rowe Hi everybody, it’s Mary Rowe from the Canadian Urban Institute. Thank you for joining us. We’re really excited about this conversation today. It’s a sobering one though. Not that CityTalks are ever a bundle of laughs. They’re not always. But boy oh boy, are we going to talk about a really tough topic today. And I was just thinking about it as I was walking into the office this morning that … in Toronto it’s a very humid, heavy day. And it reminds me of what was happening over a year ago, where it was also very humid and heavy. And I know it’s humid and heavy in various cities, and it’s smoky in various cities across the country. I happen to be in Toronto today, which is the traditional territory of number of Indigenous, Métis and First Nations folks. And as people know on CityTalk we are constantly reinforcing and coming to terms with what reconciliation and truth really needs to look like. Here it’s the traditional territory signed by the Anishnabeg, the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples covered by Treaty 13 and the Williams Treaty. But the disproportionate experience of homelessness and displacement in Indigenous populations is something that happens around the world. And that’s part of what we’re talking about here today … It is coming from an extraordinary story, it happened to be in Toronto over a year ago. We’re going to hear a little bit about that story and what was going on at that period of time, and also then have a conversation with colleagues from across the country about the whole set of challenges that are presented to local places and particularly municipalities when we have large numbers of people fleeing disastrous situations, either seeking asylum or some other kind of refugee status or all the different complications that are contributing to increasing levels of global migration. And so thank you for joining us. Please put comments into the chat. As you know, we monitor the chat. I appreciate all the intel that people offer there. There’s a whole parallel universe in the chat. If you’re a regular CityTalker and you haven’t ever signed into the chat, you don’t know what you’re missing. You’re missing a whole lot of people from across the country and into the US and in Europe, throwing in ideas, throwing in resources, asking questions … A number of which we put into the conversation as best we can. We filter them in, but there’s also, just as I suggest, lots and lots of rich content there. And with a topic as tough as this one, I think we need lots and lots of heads. Lots and lots of eyes, ears, hands on the typewriters. How old I am … I’ve still got a typewriter. On the keyboard! Expressing questions and solutions and pointing us to things that work better. And we always said, at CUI and on CityTalk, we talk about what’s working, what’s not, and what’s next. And this particular set of challenges, I think, highlights some of the fundamental structural things that we’re up against that aren’t working well, in terms of people’s experience in places and particularly in urban places. So, I’m going to ask the gang from Toronto who are going to come and tell us a little bit about this story first, to come on. And so I’m going to ask Kizito to come on and give us a little bit of the lay of the land of what happened a year ago, and what’s continuing to happen, obviously. And then you’ve got some colleagues who are also going to come on. And I appreciate that everybody is coming into this conversation from a different perspective. And people have different vocations, different kinds of priorities, different lenses to see through. But isn’t that the important thing about these kinds of place based conversations is that we all have an obligation, a role, a set of gifts that we can bring into the conversation. And so I’m very keen for us to learn from you, and exchange and understand those three things. What worked, what didn’t and what should we be doing next? So thank you for joining us and sharing with us this extraordinary story and what we can be learning from it for the better next time. So over to you.

Kizito Musabimana And thank you so much, Mary. Thank you to CUI and ULI for hosting and making this platform available for all of us to be able to share what’s been going on in the city of Toronto and across the region, really. And I would say even across Canada, but mainly, across the GTA, which is where we’ve faced, the hardest crisis or the hardest challenges around refugee claimants and migrants who had nowhere to go. So personally, I’m the founder of the Rwandan Canadian Healing Center and among many of our objectives is to advocate for the African community, the folks that are going through challenges that that our community has gone through. And so we happen to be at 117 Peter Street, downtown Toronto, which is across from, 129 Peter Street. So 129 happens to be the site where many folks who are coming to … And I would say around June 1st is where we started to see numbers increase. So I could easily see from our office where we were, I could see the shelter downstairs, and we started seeing numbers. One day would be 5, the next day is 10. So by the time it hit about maybe 18 to 30, so adding 20 to 30 every day I was concerned. So I started reaching out to my community because, again, this is not … The Rwandan Canadian Healing Center usually doesn’t focus in this kind of space. We’re usually serving newcomers to Canada, people who have been here as African Canadians. But we don’t usually serve migrants and refugees or refugee claimants. So it was just something that was concerning for us. And we started reaching out to the community, and everybody just sent us like lists of shelters. So we reached out to the shelters and we found out that it was actually a decision that was made, within the city of Toronto, not to accept refugee claimants into the general shelters. So they all kind of started growing on the outside in front of us. And, you know, we hit the campaign. I remember we were going to different mayoral campaigns, basically asking the candidates what they were going to do. And I remember asking even our current mayor now Olivia Chow, what was she going to do? And luckily enough, you know, down the road, she ended up, stepping up and inviting all of us to actually work together to find those solutions. So the city stepped up eventually, when the new administration came in. But around that time, we had to struggle to find out what to do. And then I think around, around June 10th, we met with the city, with the mayor. From there, we, a group of us, various groups that serve refugee claimants and just unhoused folks in general, came together. We had a press conference on July 14th, and the rest is history. We’ve you know, the community stepped up. Some of the folks that are with us today, like Pastor Eddie, Nadine and Pastor Judith from Revival Time, Hajad from the Ugandan Muslim and so many others stepped up. Many people, the Black organizations stepped up with donations and support. But only now … We could only do so much. We still needed the government. And that’s the work that we are still trying to do today. Just trying to get to the bottom of the challenge and how to solve it. Of course, we understand the main issue is housing affordability, it is a huge issue. But beyond that, there is a lot of other things that can be done at the municipal levels, across the country, at the provincial levels and at the federal level, and those things are still needed. And there’s so much that still needs to be done. But, maybe I’ll pass it on to, like you say, I have colleagues, I have Alexa Gilmour, who has been working with us. So we have so many groups that are doing the work, and Alexa Gilmour is a co-chair of the crisis in our city. She can maybe share a bit about what was happening pre July or early summer of 2023 within the ecosystem, because there were so many things that have happened, before we got here. And I think it’s always important to highlight those and to actually stand on those shoulders that came before us. And then Pastor Eddie can maybe share on the role of the black organizations and then Nadine can follow with the need for cultural support, because, again, these are the work that’s ongoing as we speak. Alexa …

Mary W Rowe Alexa, before you speak, can I just call out to everybody in the chat. Thanks, chatters. Change your settings so that everything you say is going to everyone. Little toggle at the bottom of your chat. Otherwise, it just comes to me and the gang, and there’s a lot of panelists who are happy to see it, but everybody needs to see what you’re writing. So a few of you have posted only to host and panelists, go back repost to everybody. Second thing is, I should have acknowledged, right off the bat, my bad. Sorry. Our great colleagues at ULI Toronto, who are the co-hosts of this and actually who initiated this session with us. So, sorry about that. They are ten feet away from me because we share an office together. And so, my apologies that I didn’t acknowledge them right off the bat. So everybody, please change your settings and Alexa, over to you. And the other thing I just want to add is … we have several pastors on this call. And we can talk more about that, about how pivotal the faith communities are to this. But I’m not going to use your titles. I hope that’s okay. So, but, anyway, you can tell me if I should be, but Alexa, Pastor Alexa, the Reverend Alexa, over to you next to tell us a little bit about what Kizito is describing.

Alexa Gilmour Thanks, Mary. Alexa is just fine. So for me, I got involved in refugee work over ten years ago, when my church was asked to house a refugee family that was facing deportation, and they lived with us for a year and a half inside the building, unable to leave. Another issue that we have in our country sometimes is the failure of that system. But in about late June of 2023, I started getting calls from concerned colleagues and started showing up at 129 Peter Street. And I just want to set that scene for you a little bit. If you’re not in Toronto, 129 Peter Street is in the heart of the entertainment district. So there are restaurants. There are families going to movies. There are couples dressed to the nines. And in June of last year, July of last year, August of last year, all through the winter, they were stepping over black bodies to go to restaurants, movies, and a nightclub right across the street. So that is the context in which many of us were spurred to action. We were seeing our beloved siblings, locked out in the middle of a funding dispute between the federal government and the municipal government. And we were seeing the numbers growing. So those of us who’ve been doing this for many years, refugee claimants are the ones who come to our airports or to our borders, and they make a claim at the border. And we signed on to the UN Declaration of Refugee Rights as a country, that if you come to our borders and you say you are in need of asylum or in refuge, we will protect you and we will address your claim. So just to give you a sense of it, in 2023, we had 143,575 refugee claimants. So 143,000. To put that into context, the year before, in 2022, there was 91,000. So a massive jump, right? Now some would say, well, that was because of the pandemic. So I went back in time and looked in 2019, we only had 64,000. In 2018 we had 55,000. We’ve tripled since 2018. So this is the numbers that we’re seeing in the country. Now, it’s not… it’s disproportionately sort of spread across the country. For example, in Ontario and Quebec, we’re seeing the largest numbers. In May of this year, there was 15,000, almost 16,000, 8600 of them were in Ontario, 5000 in Quebec. And then B.C. had 800 and Alberta had seven. But the refugees are moving across the country. So this is really a crisis or a situation that we all have to put sort of our efforts into. And we’re seeing that the shelters are full. Peel region had 4% refugee claimants in 2022, and it jumped to well over 60% refugee claimants in 2023. So really big numbers. Cities were overwhelmed by this. And now what’s happening is that the IRCC, the Immigration Refugee Board for the federal government are taking the refugee claimants from Toronto by the hundreds every week, and taking them to cities across the province. So there’s hundreds of them in hotels in Cornwall, Windsor, Niagara, and those communities, that Nadine will be talking about a little bit, are becoming overwhelmed in terms of providing the supports. The other thing in terms of background was that we had fabulous refugee claimant organizations who settled these folks really well. They’ve been doing it for 30 years plus, and they do it for sometimes half of what the cost of the federal government, and our cities can do. Because we’re having to react. We’re having to buy hotel rooms. And that’s $250 a night per person. Whereas some of the refugee claimant serving agencies do it for $50 to $150. So that’s the context in which sort of all of this fell. But at the end of the day of this, we’re talking about humans, right? We’re talking about two of my dearest friends who I met a year ago when they were freezing and in a zero degree temperature in sun dresses from Uganda. They’d escaped with their lives, left their children behind, and then found themselves wandering Spadina Avenue for two straight days in Flip-Flops. We’re talking about a Nigerian man who, you know, I had to send to Saint Mike’s hospital with a case of suspected pneumonia. We’re talking about our brothers and sisters. And so the numbers tell one story, but each individual tells a very different story, and it’s really compelling that that we do something about it. And I want to bring in Pastor Eddie because, of course, he and Nadine, who you’ll hear from, they met those individuals and those individual stories and opened up their doors of their spaces to make sure that the people that I was seeing on the street found a place of refuge.

Mary W Rowe Okay, well, let’s go to Pastor Eddie next. You know, just as we’re getting him cued up, I often say that cities are a fundamental act of collective empathy. That we are in proximity to one another. We hold a space together and a lot of people forget this, and they forget what their obligations are or they feel helpless, I think often, don’t know what the mechanisms are, and they have an assumption that systems are going to kick in and support. And what we’re seeing in so many domains and this is not new to CityTalk, is that systems that we thought were in place to address these things, aren’t able to deliver. So it’s requiring a lot of other organizations … So Pastor Eddie, let’s hear from you in terms of the steps that you took and how you got engaged in this conversation. Thank you. Alexa, over to you, Eddie.

Eddie Jjumba Thank you Mary. Thank you to my colleagues who spoke before me. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be here. I like that we’re sitting down to have a conversation. I spent a good nine months without that luxury of being able to sit down and plan things. We were in reaction mode, because we needed to be. So I am very grateful for this. So how’d I come in in the picture? I will take you back a little bit before the July 17th press conference. I’m going to take you about a month before that. So around June 17th, around June, in the middle, I received a phone call from just a community member who knows me from my many years of leading a church called Dominion Church. And he asks me a question. He says, Pastor, are you aware of our business? This is the language he used. Are you aware of our brothers and sisters sleeping on the streets of Toronto? I’m like, what do you mean? It’s like … “I mean exactly what I said”. There are many people and you can tell that they are Africans. In fact, some of them, I even spoke to them, they are from Africa. They are sleeping on the streets, on cardboard. So I have lived in Toronto. I have lived here since 2006. I have never seen that. I have seen … I have interacted with the homeless population. In fact, I was a shelter intake worker for years. I didn’t see the kind of picture he was describing, so I piqued interest. That phone call now draws me to being attentive to really what’s going on in downtown Toronto. So little did I know that the numbers we had growing, as my brother was describing them. So we said, what are we going to do? That is around June 20th. So I called a meeting at the church, and I just shared with everybody what I have just learned, because I learned that the numbers were growing big. So then one Sunday we just get one church van and two other vans from volunteers, and we drive to that location. We were going to pick eight people. We ended up picking 23 people and I thought to myself, okay, we didn’t realize what we’re going to do. So we brought them to the church without a plan per sé, and all I did is to put on a zoom meeting, and we appealed to community church members to take people to their homes because we didn’t think we could have people sleeping at the church. It was clear that church is not where you sleep. You go there for everything else except sleeping. So we started doing that. I would appeal to people say, “oh, Eddie, can you take two people?” “Can you take one person” or “Alexa, can you take three”? We did that for a good three weeks, and I realized how unsustainable it was, because two weeks in, if you took three people, that’s three extra adults on your grocery bill. No funding whatsoever, no means whatsoever. And people were calling to say, “Pastor, can you send me a bag of rice”? I didn’t have a bag of rice. So I realized that this was very … This was not sustainable. Now a press conference happens on July 17th. So because of that work we had been doing silently and quietly, and we’re just doing what we thought was the human thing to do. This is how I think they came to know about us. So they said no, it has to be at this press conference. I come to the press conference. After the press conference, my phone number became literally like a call center because now people thought, okay, there’s another group here that take people. But really we didn’t have a way to take people. Now I’m going to really summarize this … on July 17th. Now the press conference was July 14th, so that’s a Friday. So Saturday, Sunday now on Monday, July 17th, we hear an announcement that there’s a church that has opened up 100 spaces where people can go. Now, because I was in touch with so many people that were really desperate for space, I started registering people. Before I knew it, I had about 40 people just today awaiting with me. I said, okay, fine. So I sat with them, at this church, while we waited for Kizito and the team to pick up the people who were gathering at that different location downtown. They went downtown, they picked up people. They went to pick 60 people. They ended up picking 170 people. Now, if you’re putting together the math … the church that had promised space, they’d only promised 100 people. That means that they received way more than they were able to accommodate. That also meant that for us, we’re waiting at Dominion to be picked up … up until this day, that bus has not come. And this is 12 months down the road. So that is how we got in. So people started sleeping at the church, literally on carpets and chairs. Whatever was there is what they used. So that’s how we come in – in a way more of a reaction than, than a response. We’re just reacting to a dire need. People came to us after sleeping on the streets of Toronto for a good 21 days. I have some images that don’t never leave me. There was a young lady from Kenya. She missed the van that went to pick people because she fainted. That’s before the van came. When she fainted, she was taken to one of the major hospitals in Toronto. This really left me so upset. When the time came for her to be discharged, well, they found out it was exhaustion. She didn’t have any other medical issues. It was exhaustion. When the time to discharge came – they phoned me, the hospital social worker from the hospital calls me and I tell the social worker that no, we don’t have anywhere to take this lady. She was calling me to receive this lady. And I said, “no, I don’t know if you know, we are a church. We are not a shelter”. She said, “well, I’ve tried all the shelters, there’s nothing”. I said, “well, you can’t send her back to the street”. And guess what? She was discharged to the street.

Mary W Rowe You’re flagging something that we see again and again, which is I think … and I had a conversation interestingly, last night with someone in New York about whether we need to move to a place where it is illegal to discharge someone from any care facility, including a jail or a hostel or a hospital or a triage center, that you cannot discharge them unless they have a permanent address and whether that would actually make the difference, I don’t know, but we’re going to come to that kind of conversation, we’ll come to those topics later in this in the session about, are there specific things we need to be doing? Can we pass now to Nadine? Is she next on your list, Eddie?

Eddie Jjumba So, yes. So before I invite Nadine. One minute to just do what Kizito asked me to do, otherwise he will fire me.

Mary W Rowe Okay, so you don’t want to be in the bad books of Kizito …

Eddie Jjumba I was supposed to talk about the role of the grassroots, and I’m just going to do that in 60 seconds. Okay. So I want you to imagine, Mary and everybody here and the powers that be, and I see our beloved counsellor here who is literally in our corner. I really have a deep points for her. But I want you to imagine an arrangement where community based organizations such as faith groups, churches, nonprofit organizations … Imagine where they don’t just jump in when gaps are found. Imagine there’s an arrangement where with an ongoing, respectful partnership between the government and these organizations so that when things like this happen and they will happen, so that when things like this happen, we just activate this arrangement. I want you to … everybody here, if you remember nothing I said, I pray you remember this. We want to imagine a time where the government, rights groups, faith groups, mosques, synagogues, or other grassroot black organizations have this respect for and that’s what is important for me, respectful partnership where they are not looked as, as disruptors or as beggars, because in many ways, that’s the vibe that we’re getting. Like, we know we try and be partners in development because there’s evidence that we have done that. So I want to thank all of you for listening. My sister Nadine.

Mary W Rowe Thanks, Eddie. You’re totally right. The whole question of respect and dignity. Dignity. Nadine, welcome to CityTalk.

Nadine Miller Good morning everyone. I’m Nadine Miller, the Executive Director of Pilgrim Feast. Like Pastor Eddie, it’s started for us by somebody saying “my brothers are sleeping on the streets”. 40 people, 40 men were sleeping in our basement for a while because we had a restaurant at the top, and they slept there for a couple weeks. And then within a couple days we turned into 180 and it just kept climbing. It’s just the medical support … that was not there. And all the different nuances that make up life inside of Canada, we just realized that it was not there and not having it and knowing that the refugees did not have it. I think, you know, I could go back, but I want to go forward. I think our worst day was, Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, Kizito, Pastor Jjumba, Pastor Judith, we got together and they said there’s more people sleeping on the streets, and they said, “who’s going to take them”? And then I … Kizito was talking to me for days, over days. And I said to him, “I don’t know if I can do this”. So I went back to the church board and said, “we have to do this. How are we going to do it”? I said, “well, I have a solution”. They said, “what?” I said, “bunk beds.” And we initialized bunk beds inside of the location. And literally we … in doing that what we found was even the refugees themselves became a family and they started putting the bunk beds. And then we found out that we had more than what we expected. I think we expected about 45. But before the night was over, we were at 65. And in doing that 65, what we had to do was .. even the boxes from the bunk bed, we shifted from it being a restaurant now, and we knew that this was now complete emergency rescue center. There’s nothing that we can do. The restaurant needs to shut the doors and as a business owner, shutting your doors is never easy, especially when there’s no funds coming in. So we had to shut those doors, make the mindset we’re not going to be serving the community anymore and rip up all those boxes and literally create a bed that night. That night I said to someone I never knew that snoring could sound good. And as we had over 30 men laid right across the floor and on the chairs, if you can picture that – all the banquettes had chairs, everything was turned upside down. The tables were now outside of the restaurant, and the landlord’s like, “what’s happening?” Because they can see from the cameras what you’re doing. So all the tables were now put in the back, and they started emptying out everything. And it just became … even behind the counter where we would normally serve food, we had three refugees sleeping there. I laid the men sideways so they could fit, and we threw … Because we didn’t have enough blankets … We went shopping to Walmart. Walmart didn’t have enough. We went to five different Walmart’s all the way to Vaugh, and we’re in Etobicoke – we were we were going that far because we were buying blankets … Canadian Tire, anything that we could get our hands on, and we called Pastor Judith and we said, “We’re out of pillows because we have 60 people, we don’t have the 40, so we need more”. And she drove in until 2:00 in the morning, Pastor Judith came down and drove with Ricardo to bring us those pillows, and to see that everybody was sleeping soundly. That Thanksgiving Day, we didn’t feed the Pastor, we did not feed anyone. Nobody ate. And I apologized to my niece because she came for Thanksgiving dinner, but we actually didn’t feed her, and she’s 13. And I was like, “I’m so sorry that you have to experience that”. But, you know, we have to feed everybody else, right? Let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s take you to Starbucks because you have shares there. She believes in shares …

Mary W Rowe Nadine, do you know this phrase that the military use which is “leaders eat last” … You know, it’s, one of those, things you’re either raised with you or not. So that was a teachable moment for you with your niece …

Nadine Miller It was it was a teachable moment. None of us, because we fed everybody and the secret was we got turkeys anonymously out of nowhere. And my secret donor was actually Doug Ford’s office. And it was, it was a thing that, I knew how it happened because I spoke to someone. They said they were donating, he said, “no, you have a problem in your community, go and feed them instead”. So it was quite interesting to see that play out.

Mary W Rowe That’s the dilemma … you guys all became … You gals and guys, all became media sensations through this. I mean, I want to see if I can bring in the two folks that are coming in from Vancouver and Montreal because I want to just move the conversation a bit to – this isn’t just a one off. You guys are reporting from the front. This is the battle zone that you dealt with. But what I’d like to do is go to Vancouver, Montreal now to just hear, because I know they have their own experiences with us. And then Alejandro and Richard, I’m going to ask you to come in at the end because we’ve really got to talk about … there was a whole bunch of breakdown that led to you folks having to become heroes, Herculean efforts, getting donated anonymous turkeys, you know, trying to improvise on the fly. And we all know that’s not sustainable. So I think, I’m assuming that that’s the challenge we’ve got to face is how do we actually structurally put in place the supports we need. But can I ask Masoon to jump on, and Sabrina, and we can hear a little bit about those two experiences in those places, and then I’ll come back. Don’t touch your television, you know, don’t leave. I just need everybody to stay on. So Masoon, do you want to go first? (Don’t touch that dial, that’s the phrase … Don’t touch that dial.)

Masoon Balouch Hello, everyone. First of all, I would like to say, thank you for Mr. Kizito and Mr. Eddie and Nadine and Alexia for doing an amazing, amazing job of work and important work and listening to your conversation, I, my heart was aching, and at the same time, I had tears of, you know, kind of joyful feeling that, you know, things were working out. You guys were doing amazing job. And it gives me a lot of ideas and inspiration listening to your stories. And I’m so glad that I’m here today with you guys. So, from Montreal, I haven’t experienced that desperate situation in my field. But I work as a coordinator with Brique x Brique, and I’m a board member also. So what I have is I do talk to a lot of immigrant, South Asian women especially, I have a support group that I facilitate at Brique x Brique for South Asian a woman as newcomers. And at Brique x Brique, we have another program that we call a park exchange time bank. So, what my experiences is that with the South Asian population is there is a housing crisis. There is a desperate housing crisis, among the refugees and what they have is, you know, with my volunteers and talking to different women is they don’t have … They’re having a hard time finding an apartment. And as a quick solution they are living in a shared rooms, with multiple, multiple, like, 15 people in the same house.

Masoon Balouch Where they can’t cook anything because by the time they come home, everything is … somebody has eaten it. They are taking showers at 4:00 in the morning, because after that they won’t get a chance to do that. And looking for an apartment, you know, that’s … Apartment finding is a is a really, really hard job for them because as being refugee, they don’t have reference, you know, for someone, you know, and they don’t have a credit history, they don’t have a paycheck. So that’s the obstacles that they are looking at and with the time bank project that we have is what we are trying to do is as a partner exchange, we are we are getting community and local residents, making them as a member. And we have about 35 local members and they are helping each other. So they are tasked that they help each other without any money involved. And one of the tasks is to help someone to find an apartment. And, so, so we have people helping each other. But what I realized, one thing that kind of scared me that, this one lady was showing this person apartment, a lady an apartment. And she was like, okay, this is the apartment. You know, you have to, you know, this is really … Because, you know, it’s in her apartment building, so it’s kind of like a network that they know where the apartment is. They know. And she told her, she told the person who was looking for apartment that no matter what happens, don’t call the police. [Wow]. So, you know …

Mary W Rowe I mean, this is, you know, you’re describing a great quality that all of our previous panelists described, which is this instinct we have to mutual aid, that we will try to find ways to help each other. That’s a wonderful human quality. However, you’ve just illustrated what happens when the system that we humans have created is put in place, and people don’t trust that system … They don’t call the police, then we’re forced into this situation, whether it’s a sudden crisis like the asylum seekers suddenly have no place or a longer term issue that you’re saying about how do you settle newcomers if there’s inadequate housing? How do we make the on the ground work in the system? I’m going to go to Sabrina next, if I may, Masoon and see … Let’s get the BC perspective. And then we’re going to take the last 15 minutes on the call just to say. What do we need to change? What are the fundamental things that we need to be advocating for so that we’re not in this kind of mess again? And I’ll ask the counselor and Richard to join at that point. Sabrina, give us a perspective from the West Coast, can you?

Sabrina Dumitra Yeah. Thanks, Mary and hi, everyone. And I’m joining you today from the unceded, traditional and stolen territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh)peoples, also known as Burnaby, B.C.. And thank you to everyone who shared previously. Here on the West Coast, we were watching this, and the organization that I work for, AMSSA is the umbrella organization for immigrant and refugee serving agencies. So we don’t work on the front line, but we work supporting organizations. And so we were seeing what was happening in Toronto and while the refugee claimant numbers were increasing here in B.C., they weren’t at the same level and extent. But for BC’s context, the numbers were quite a bit higher than the previous years. And so numbers had been going up roughly about, you know, almost doubled from previous years. So for, for us it was a large jobs. And so some of the things that we’ve been doing, we’ve been, you know, we’ve been doing this work for a while is there’s a multi-agency partnership. It’s, it’s a collective of organizations that meet monthly to really support each other around support for refugee claimants.

Mary W Rowe What’s it called?

Sabrina Dumitra It’s a multi-agency partnership also known as MAP BC. And so this has been around for probably 15 years or so. Or even longer. Where wanting to work together in a collective manner. One of the things that the province of BC has also started, that started this April is they provided funding through what they’re calling the program, the BC Safe Haven Program. And so it’s a specialized funding program, focusing on support for refugee claimants. And there is some emergency housing supports and housing referrals as part of that program, recognizing that the work, you know, and the numbers exceeds the, the funding that exists. But there’s different steps that are happening. And from AMSSA’s side, one of the things that that we collectively with all of our members in our organization started to do is we were seeing what was happening, you know, in cities like Toronto, knowing that, you know, situations are going to be very similar here in BC you know, we have heard that, you know, shelters do see between, you know, 80 to 95% of people living in shelters are refugee claimants currently – recognizing that we have for everyone in the province, a housing crisis here in BC. We look to kind of approach it from a strategic direction as well. So we looked to, to do a research report, focusing on, you know, understanding and addressing the, the challenges of newcomers when it comes to, to housing. And, and so we released that report about a month and a half ago. We’re also working with the B.C. Nonprofit Housing Association, because here in B.C., we do have a provincial election coming up in October. We’re working with them on creating a newcomer housing strategy. And what are the recommendations that we’re putting forward to the province, ahead of, of that provincial election so that we can be on top of this and so that we, we don’t end up in situations that, that they did experience in, in Toronto. So we’ve been approaching it from these planning and strategic perspectives. And knowing that we have been seeing increased numbers here in the province and that resources are absolutely stretched.

Mary W Rowe So it’s interesting to … Just a couple of things and I’m going to ask Alejandra and, Richard to put their cameras on too, so that we have a full Hollywood Squares tableau for the last few minutes. It’s interesting what you’re talking about, Sabrina, because, you used convening. You’ve used research. You’ve identified gaps, and now you’re doing advocacy. And those four strategic steps … and we’ll post the research on here … those four strategic steps, not everybody has the capacity to do that. Pastor Eddie is busy making sure that he’s got the right teams in place. Nadine is there trying to make sure she’s got, you know, the cops in the right place. We’re all engaged at different orders and levels of intervention, and it takes all of us, obviously. And I appreciate that in B.C., you haven’t had the same kind of pressure – just in terms of numbers – but it’s growing. But you have other pressures, but you’re continuing to sort of push this along. So the more we can create this kind of pan Canada focus and help each other out. Right? Councilor, you were on the front lines of this. You already had a call out from one of your colleagues about how critical you were. And, Richard, your office is right behind me, and we are three blocks from Peter Street. So you are very aware of this. And you work with the private sector, who were part of the group that Alexa was talking about. People were very viscerally presented with this on the street, if you were going into an office or any kind of an event. So let me hear first from you, Alejandra, you were you were in a jurisdictional spot here.

Alejandra Bravo Yeah, yeah. And I think it’s that and it’s also the unusual situation that we were in the middle of a by-election for mayor. So I first … I knew of the decision that was made by the Shelter Division and the mayor’s office here, under Mayor Tory, that doors would be closed to asylum seekers, refugee claimants, refugees at the end of May, because of my relationship with refugee houses for a long time. But we were on the outside. Not a lot of power. I started to have meetings with some of the people in this room even so, because, you know, convening, talking about, trying to diagnose the problem and figuring out how we could do some organizing so our advocacy would be effective, started towards the end of June. And then before Mayor Chow even assumed office, we were meeting with the big groups. And I think it was important that we met with people who are concerned about the refugees and also about unhoused population together to make sure that we had a lot of solidarity. I mean, this is a perfect storm. The federal government closed the passing in Quebec. All arrivals were redirected to the Pearson airport. And at the same time, we have a growing number of unhoused people in Toronto. [Already] Yes … And, and the numbers have been exploding. People are being evicted, are very precariously housed. The affordability problem … Rents are going up. And just to, you know, we already had the biggest shelter system in Canada by far, so things were stretched. I can tell you that, you know, I met with the high commission, Commissioners Office for refugees, the United Nations, the person who was attached to Canada, met with her, brought her to the executive committee. The things that have changed now is that the mayor has made me a Chair of The Economic and Community Development Committee, so I have a little bit more authority here, as the shelter system reports in, and I can look into the inside. I can tell you that last year, when this crisis happened, there were 4000 refugee claimants arriving per month in Toronto. This year, it’s 8000. Double. So, like, so we’re in a situation where things are not going to get easier. And at the same time, we have more people living in encampments, more people needing shelter. So I think that what really made a difference here was collective advocacy. The real springing into action of people like Alexa and certainly the leadership in the black community and faith leaders who, I remember I think Nadine told me that or, I think it was you, is what it called to mind of some very dark periods for African people, for African descendants. And we … I certainly felt it too, it was it was a real crisis. And, you know, we had press conferences. I think one of the things, we also have is like, you’re organizing on the outside, you’re convening, you’re building solidarity, you’re looking for solutions, and you have internal champions with decision making. It helps you with your advocacy. And I think that’s a part that I was happy to play. The funding that was announced by the federal government in July didn’t come until the end of the year, and that was for the first six months. So it’s 200 million, you know, in the whole 250 million … It puts a lot of pressure. I will say that myself, I’m a refugee to Canada. I arrived in 1974. I know how it’s supposed to work. And there is a really important element here that’s missing, which is the provincial government. The Ministry for immigrants, refugees and citizenship. But the federal government has a big responsibility and role to play, clearly. But the provincial government used to have welcome centers, and that’s where we went when I arrived, my parents quickly got their status confirmed. They got jobs. And that’s how you’re able to make sure that people are coming into welcoming communities. We have a lower population in lots of parts of Ontario where people would like to be receiving communities. They need support. I think a couple of things have happened at the same time that are, you know, really stressful around the inter-jurisdictional piece … it was sort of the federal government saying, “well, they’re not technically refugees because they only wanted to recognize sponsor refugees like Ukrainians who they, you know, Canada’s opened the doors for and created a bunch of different programs and systems to bring them … The character of the people being African people, black people, I think is a really important dimension here that we have to name, because it was horrific to see the difference in terms of the treatment. Last summer in August, the provincial government and Toronto put … Toronto put $7.7 million into the Canada Ontario Housing Benefit to help people move quickly into housing. It works really well. But imagine that municipality putting money into a provincial and federal program. That’s how desperate things were. right now, the federal ministry is receiving people, moving people. In Niagara and in other places, in Windsor, they’re refugee houses. And settlement service organizations have banded together to prepare themselves to receive the people, who are going to face a lot of barriers, including racism, to be ready. There is still the need for a reception center where you arrive at the airport and you immediately, they say, “okay, you’re an asylum seeker. We’re going to take care of that. Here’s how you file your papers”. The High Commission for refugees for the UN tells us that, you know, 80% of people are going to have their claim approved. So it’s important that we move through that quickly. And, right now we’re, you know, that that’s still ongoing. And the Canada Ontario Housing Benefit, we’re waiting from the provincial government. We could be moving 300 people a month out from shelters, and into housing … In a context of an affordability crisis it’s a really important piece of the solution. Refugees do really well when they’re processed quickly, early and are able to get to work, which they’re mostly ready to do. And I think that’s where we have to head. Municipal governments are always dealing with the decisions that are made at the federal and provincial levels. Yeah, but, what choice do we have? Our humanity and our obligation to each other demands it.

Mary W Rowe Yeah, well, you’re totally right about that. You are on the front lines in every way. You’ve added, Alejandra, you’ve highlighted a piece I’m going to put above the convening research advocacy gaps piece is the self-organization piece, which is what all of you are expert at. You all were faced with crisis and you continue to be faced with crisis. And then you just start to figure out what the solutions are. And I appreciate when you’re sitting on municipal council and you’ve got all those jurisdictional fights that are not just this, a whole bunch of others. It’s hard to parse that. And so I appreciate the double role that someone like you, who’s an elected person, but who’s also an activist, how you have responded. Richard, can we just get a sense from you what your perspective is as a person working in the private sector and lots of experience, obviously, with these issues in government as well. Thoughts from you.

Richard Joy Sure. Well, first of all, thank you Mary and CUI for putting this in the platform to this conversation. It really did need a national platform in many ways, because it is a federal issue. Councilor Bravo’s point about the provincial government is really important. I want to speak to both of them, but I will say this. ULI, just for clarity, is both a private and public sector, and not for profit organization. We’re not exclusively a private sector, though a lot of our members are indeed from the private sector. Of all the housing conversations that we undoubtedly would be having no matter what, this is the one that we should not be having. And it’s very frustrating to me that we are having to have this conversation because it’s such a glaring … A flaw in how we are seeing our senior levels of government respond to what is absolutely clearly their responsibility, first and foremost. And I love very much that my city, City of Toronto and Councilor Bravo and Mayor Chow have picked up the slack. But they haven’t got the resources to do this, as we all know. And nor does Vancouver or Calgary or any other city in Canada. And it is, You know, I hate to say this, it’s shameful that this part of the housing conversation which is so clearly jurisdictionally federal and provincial, has been sloughed down to the local levels, and to the not-for-profit faith-based organizations. I mean, what we heard at the beginning of this program is embarrassing. It’s embarrassing to think that we would have a system, or lack thereof, where the slack had to be pulled in the way that we heard described. And I’m just grateful that organizations, represented on this program and others, have picked up that slack. But that shouldn’t be. And so … but I think the bigger … This is the most acute part of an even bigger conversation. And that is just the absolute crisis of housing policy in our country and at all ends of the spectrum. We have seen a true abdication of responsibility at the provincial and federal government around affordable housing, around housing maybe writ large, but affordable housing. And I think that now what we’re starting to see …

Mary W Rowe I was just going to say to Richard that his connection was unstable, and then we lost him. But I think I have a sense of where he was going, which is that … and Peter Martin, thank you for putting something into the chat about this … There is very clear constitutional responsibility for a number of these issues including asylum seekers and refugee claimants that sits squarely with the federal government, and I see the counselor is reiterating that Toronto’s tried. Sorry, Richard, I cut you off, but your connection was unstable anyway. So I’m going to just … I tried to paraphrase, I think, where you were going, which is it has to do with – where are the province and the federal government in terms of providing leadership? We’ve only got four minutes left. And we’ve been having a multilayered conversation and lots and lots of great content in the chat. Obviously not the last time we’re going to talk about this, but I just want to go back to the folks who were on the ground in Toronto, just cognizant that we’ve got very little, little time here. If you’ve got 30 seconds each of you to just say what going forward is your priority. See if you can stick to 30 seconds if it’s possible. Kizito you first.

Kizito Musabimana All right. I would say that definitely cultural appropriate, culturally catered services is where we’re going, working with … And we are really pleased to be working with the City of Toronto around implementing the first ever black run shelter, fully run – black run shelters, looking at wraparound services that are culturally relevant. When we talk about, for example, giving newcomers food – what kind of foods are you giving them? A lot of the shelters give them sandwiches. I’ve said this many times, Africans don’t eat sandwiches. So we are talking about that. But in a bigger sense, like how do you receive people and make sure that they are well taken care of mentally, spiritually and physically? So that’s what we’re looking at. How do we achieve that? Working with the city of Toronto, but also the Region of Peel and others. And we want to see that across the country.

Mary W Rowe People focused. Working from what people themselves need. Right. Alexa …

Alexa Gilmour I think there’s two pieces … At the grassroots level it’s building up the network so that when a crisis like this happens, we can lean on each other, we can do the mutual aid, and we know where folks are. There was a situation where we had a lot of folks new to this, a lot of folks doing this for decades, and we couldn’t reach each other because we were all head down in the crisis. So how do we build those networks going forward? But at the advocacy level, it’s absolutely a continuation of getting the federal government to take responsibility, but a targeting of the provincial government. We held a press conference a week ago, led by the African Canadian Collective that was born out of this crisis, and it was on the grounds of Queen’s Park for that reason. They haven’t come to the table in terms of housing, the Canadian Ontario Housing Benefit or some other program that would help get our refugees out of the shelter. We’re seeing serious mental health issues as a result of the languishing that’s happening now. So we’ve got a new crisis on top of the original crisis.

Mary W Rowe A crisis on top of a crisis. And the point that you made that if you address these things early, you get ahead of them. If you don’t, it gets worse. Right. Eddie?

Eddie Jjumba 30 seconds! Thank you. I’ll start from there. Thank you. Everybody. Canada … We cannot say that we don’t know how to receive people when they come, when we are not expecting them. That would not be a true statement. We have precedence for how to receive unplanned refugees. So let’s just do that. We cannot also fail to observe that maybe the question that we need to wonder – what is different this time? We know that the difference, one of the visible differences is the people that are crowding on the streets are people of black color, and that is something that we need to allow ourselves to be bothered with. We’ve discussed the reception center as a potential time tested solution. It has worked in the past. Let’s act on it. It’s not that whole solution, but it’s definitely part of a solution. The reception center with wrap around services.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. Very tangible. I appreciate the specificity of that. Really quick, Nadine. Sabrina. Masoon. Nadine first.

Nadine Miller We’re looking at housing. Interim housing. We’re also looking at permanent housing, and we need to see more coming down from the federal government and the Ontario government. And we need full wraparound services. But we want culturally sensitive food to be a part of it. And we want culturally sensitive, just the environments as well. So it’s welcoming.

Mary W Rowe Thank you. Sabrina.

Sabrina Dumitra I’m looking to release the newcomer housing strategy in September, together with the B.C. Nonprofit Housing Association, ahead of the provincial election and to continue to engage with the province, particularly on this topic.

Mary W Rowe You’ve got hundreds of readers already lined up here who are looking forward to your report soon.

Masoon Balouch I think we need more of social housing built in the community and Brique x Brique is also involved in two social housings. And mutual aid is a very important factor to, you know, combat the problems.

Mary W Rowe And how we successfully do it. Last word to you, Alejandra.

Alejandra Bravo Yes of course. Yes. I want to thank everyone here who stepped up and did the work of the state when the state was absent. Without that pressure we wouldn’t be where we are now in terms of bringing the federal government to the table. And now we need to turn our focus on the provincial government as well, with people on the inside at city government I think we can enable some better solutions.

Mary W Rowe Absolutely. So just remember everybody self-organization, convening, research, advocacy. And I’m going to add action. Thank you very much for telling us the story. We never have enough time on these things. But you can see the chat is blowing up as usual. People are very, very appreciative of you sharing your stories. They’ll do lots of research. We all well. We always say it’s not the end of the conversation. It’s just the beginning. Now the real work starts. A week from today we’re going to talk about severe weather, which sadly is affecting cities across … On top of everything, it’s affecting cities across the country. So join us for CityTalk a week from today. Sabrina, Alexa, Nadine. Kizito, Eddie. Masoon, Alejandra and Richard, wherever you are, thank you so much for being part of this conversation and for sharing your experience and your knowledge and insight. And let’s hope for a better path forward together. Thanks, everybody.