The federal government pledged $362 million to help provinces handle record-high numbers of asylum seekers on Feb. 1. Quebec will receive about $100M.
The pledge comes after Quebec Premier François Legault wrote a letter to the prime minister last month asking him to divert asylum seekers to other provinces. He said Quebec is near a “breaking point”.
Abdulla Daoud, Executive Director of the Refugee Center in Montreal, told CJLO that the number of refugee claimants isn’t the issue – it’s the outdated systems in place to support them that need to change. “It’s a legal structure, both provincially and federally, that’s causing this bottleneck,” he explained.
