According to CBC Canada, almost 27,000 Syrians have arrived in Canada since November and already (in 6 months) their private sponsors are falling down on the job and even government-funded refugees are scurrying to local food banks because they have no jobs and no money.
CBC Canada (begins by describing the plight of one hungry family dependent on food banks for indigent Canadians), then this:
“When we come here, we didn’t expect we get any kind of help, and, unfortunately, that was the ugly truth,” she said. “So, we are alone, and we struggle still.”
[….]
Demand is growing for food banks and the organizations that supply them.
From February to March, Daily Bread, which supplies its own food bank and 200 other food programs in Toronto, including the Scott Mission, saw a 20 per cent jump in the number of clients using its services.
[….]
It was the largest increase in recent memory, said head of research Richard Matern, and most of it was because of the influx of Syrian refugees.
“We are being overwhelmed at the moment,” he said.
Across the country in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey, more than 700 government-sponsored refugees have used the local food bank since February. [of the 1,500 resettled there—ed]
Canada has a bifurcated system. Some refugees are government-funded (like in the US) and some are privately sponsored. Clearly they didn’t screen the private sponsors very well! But, as reported above, even the government-sponsored refugees are devouring the supplies at local and regional food banks.
Under federal guidelines, private sponsors are legally required to cover the cost of food, rent and other living expenses for up to a year, a minimum of roughly $27,000 for a family of four, according to government estimates.
But in Asoyan’s case, her family’s sponsor, Sarkis Shaninian, is unemployed.
He had a job when he signed up to sponsor the family but has been without work for three months.
“Money, I don’t have money to help them, no,” he said in an interview with CBC News.
[….]
At last count, 26,921 Syrian refugees had arrived in Canada since last November, and thousands more whose applications are still being processed are expected to arrive by the end of this year.
Can Canadians impeach prime ministers (just wondering)?
See our complete Canada category (177 posts), here.