“In a recent edition of the Vancouver Sun, it states that Syrian refugees will be paid a meal allowance per person per day of $15 for breakfast, $16 for lunch, and $30 for dinner by the Federal Government. Thus, a typical family with four kids will receive $186/day or $5,580/month for meals alone, and this from a government that somehow cannot afford more than about $1,100/month for all expenses for pensioners.
No wonder that the government is now admitting that this year’s deficit will be higher than the pre-election figure of $10 billion, but perhaps $25 billion!! “Hold on to your wallets”, the Liberals are back in town. For those of you seduced by the promises of “sunny ways”, reality is here, and we can look forward to higher taxes and a bigger overall debt.”
The above post was floating around social media at the end of 2015, so I felt I should do some investigating to see how accurate the post was.
At first look, I was shocked and frankly a bit frustrated. I thought, no wonder Canadians are upset with the whole refugee event.
What about us? What about the hard-working Canadians that actually live in this country? What about the Canadians who are struggling every day just to make ends meet? Shouldn’t we be taken care of first?
So I did what anyone would do when they are trying to find out the facts … I googled the article. According to the write-up in the December 14 Vancouver Sun by Tara Carman, the Immigrant Services Society of B.C. is pushing the federal government to use the Jericho military barracks as transitional housing for the thousands of Syrian refugees expected to arrive in Metro Vancouver in January and February.
“We’re being picky. We want hotels that have kitchenettes so people can cook. We want to have hotels, ideally, with more than 40 rooms because we want to centralize it as much as we can with a limited number of sites.
We’re looking at hotels in Vancouver, Richmond and Surrey currently,” explained Chris Friesen, settlement services director with the Immigrant Services Society of B.C.
Use of the Jericho barracks “would provide us with a whole bunch of beds that we don’t really have right now,” Friesen said.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokeswoman Nancy Chan, in an emailed statement, identified six military bases in Ontario and Quebec that could be used as refugee reception centres. She did not directly address the question of using Jericho, saying only that “no other (interim lodging sites) have been identified.”
It has been revealed that the federal government is seeking to book a swath of hotel rooms in Toronto and Montreal to accommodate the influx of Syrian refugees. Between now and March, Ottawa needs 300 rooms daily in each of the two cities to house about 600 refugees per night, according to a notice posted on a government procurement website. Suppliers will also be expected to provide meals.
The length of stays will vary: some will leave the next morning, others will need “two or more nights.”
Hotels will be expected to provide up to three meals a day. It states the government will reimburse up to $15 per person for breakfast, $16 for lunch and $30 for dinner.
The government is also asking suppliers set aside rooms for two government representatives who will be on-site 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the duration of the bookings.
Chan said the government expects to spend $61 million to $77 million on overnight hotel accommodations and other activities to welcome refugees when they arrive.
The government has said it plans to invest $678 million over six years toward the resettlement and support of Syrian refugees.
“They want to put them in Vancouver and they’re willing to cover the rent for a year, whatever the cost. But we’re saying you can’t do that because the fall would be too far after the one year, because you can’t go from a $3,000-a-month hotel in Vancouver to a $800 basement suite in Surrey.”
In a more recent article in the Regina Leader Post, world leaders have pledged more than $10 billion US to help fund schools, shelter and jobs for refugees from Syria’s civil war.
With Family Day around the corner, and Weyburn on the brink of bringing in refugees, I think we, as Canadians, need to put aside our feelings about these people who have not chosen the way of life that they have.
Whether we think they should be here or not, whether we are Christian or not, whether we are for or against refugees coming, I think at some point we need to ask ourselves, what kind of human beings are we? How can we be okay with people living in those conditions and not do anything about it? I think if we truly search inside, the answer is, we can’t.
