Ottawa looks to relocate refugees to provinces outside Ontario, Quebec

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Ottawa is considering a plan to relocate tens of thousands of asylum seekers across Canada to take the pressure off of Quebec and Ontario. The immigration minister said Wednesday he will use what levers he has available to get uncooperative provinces to take more.

According to a federal government briefing document obtained by National Post, 235,825 people are seeking asylum in Canada, with the bulk making their claims in Ontario and Quebec, Canada’s two most populous provinces. But if Canada were to find a way to distribute asylum seekers around the country based on provincial populations — similar to what premiers asked for following a July meeting — tens of thousands of refugees would be spread out around the country.

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Alberta, for example, would receive nearly 28,000 asylum seekers, British Columbia would receive more than 32,500 and Nova Scotia would see 4,952 refugees.

“The reality is that Quebec and Ontario are facing disproportionate pressures, compared to any other province in the country — as they have been welcoming the majority of asylum seekers,” said Renée LeBlanc Proctor, a spokesperson in Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s office, in an email.

The briefing document, LeBlanc Proctor said, is meant to “help guide discussions” between ministers on handling asylum seekers.

The idea has already met resistance.

At a speech in Moncton Wednesday afternoon, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs said that provincial government officials were brought into a conference call on Tuesday and told that “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is considering a plan to send 4,600 asylum seekers to New Brunswick without providing any federal financial assistance.”

“The Trudeau government is essentially saying, ‘Here are 4,600 people, figure it out,’ and that is not acceptable,” said Higgs.

Currently, there are just 384 asylum claimants in the Atlantic province.

“New Brunswick has always been a welcoming province. We have a long history of embracing diversity and helping those in need,” said Higgs. “But this sudden and unilateral proposal by Ottawa is deeply concerning, and I feel obligated to share the challenges it will bring to our province.”

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In late July, Quebec’s then Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette wrote to Miller suggesting that the federal government adopt a quota system for each province setting out the number of asylum seekers each will receive based upon their capacity to do so. The letter, as reported by CBC News, urged the federal government to restrict asylum seekers’ work permits to specific provinces in order to ensure they moved or refuse to cover accommodation costs except in the specific area to which the asylum seeker was told to move.

According to the federal government briefing document, Quebec has around 99,553 asylum seekers. Its proportionate share, the document says, would be just shy of 52,000. Ontario, with more than 105,000 asylum claimants, ought to receive just under 91,000, based on its population.

“We are willing to co-ordinate with our counterparts on transfers and supports, however any movement of asylum seekers will require their consent,” said LeBlanc Proctor. “As we towards a fair and sustainable approach to managing the volume of asylum seekers, the federal government expects the full collaboration of all provinces and territories.”

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Speaking to reporters at the Liberal caucus retreat in Nanaimo, B.C., Miller, the federal immigration minister, called Higgs’s comments “irresponsible” and said it was “dumb” for someone to have leaked the working document.

Miller said Ontario and Quebec have been magnets for arrivals of asylum seekers but that housing refugees in federally funded hotels hasn’t worked well and is expensive.

He said Ottawa is looking at a model with a “carrot and stick incentive” that would “push provinces that are recalcitrant” about accepting a larger share of asylum seekers.

“There’s only so far the federal government can actually be nice and say ‘please, please,” Miller said. “We also have levers that we need to pull and push.”

“We have a number of provinces, it’s no surprise, that have no particular interest in taking asylum seekers. We have some where there is interest but they also have questions with respect to financial compensation,” Miller said. “So bringing the provinces in is an important part of being responsible, and as a federation we would expect New Brunswick to be responsible and step up. That comment by the premier (Higgs) was highly irresponsible.”

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Paul Bradley, a spokesperson with the New Brunswick government, said discussions with the federal government over managing asylum seekers have been ongoing.

“The province has serious concerns with the potential for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to unilaterally make any changes related to the distribution or relocation of asylum seekers without a coordinated plan,” Bradley wrote in an email.

In July, Canada’s premiers gathered for the Council of the Federation meeting in Halifax, N.S., and called upon the federal government to “expedite assessment of genuine asylum seekers entering Canada and to work with provincial and territorial governments to determine the appropriate number of accepted asylum seekers,” according to the post-conference news release.

“Premiers support a fair distribution of asylum seekers across Canada corresponding to provincial and territorial capacity to provide housing and other supports and services. The federal government must provide appropriate funding for these costs,” the premiers said.

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François Legault, the premier of Quebec, agreed that there should be additional funding to other provinces so that they can take asylum seekers. His province received $750 million from the federal government in June after seeking $1 billion to help cover the costs of accommodating asylum seekers.

“I think it would help if the federal government gave them some money to transfer asylum seekers to their territories or provinces,” Legault said. “I would prefer to receive less in the future and have less asylum seekers.”

In addition to more than 230,000 asylum claims, more than 218,000 people are awaiting a decision on their refugee claims. (An asylum seeker is essentially a person at an earlier stage in the refugee claims process.)

While Ontario would see a reduction of 13,954 asylum claimants under a quota system, and Quebec would see a 47,671 reduction, every other province would see an increase in asylum resettlement.

British Columbia, which has 11,421 people seeking asylum, should, based on its population, receive 32,544 claimants. More than 9,700 asylum claims are open in Alberta; if the province were to receive the number of claims proportional to its population, there would be 27,827 asylum seekers in the province.

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The numbers are significantly smaller for the remainder of the country.

Manitoba, which has 1,378 open claims, would get 8,490 under a proportional system and Saskatchewan, which has 514 claimants, would get 7,075. Nova Scotia would get the most of the Atlantic provinces, with 6,131. At present, there are 397 asylum claims in Nova Scotia. Prince Edward Island, which has just 44 open claims, would get 943 and Newfoundland and Labrador, which has 291 people seeking asylum, would get 3,066.

After the July premiers’ meeting, Manitoba’s Wab Kinew and Newfoundland’s Andrew Furey said they’d be happy to take more asylum seekers, if federal funding followed. Other premiers, however, including Alberta’s Danielle Smith, Ontario’s Doug Ford and British Columbia’s David Eby, said they were already labouring under the weight of settling asylum seekers.

“Every province seems to be grappling with the remarkable immigration numbers that we’re seeing,” Eby said.

In 2023, Canada’s population cleared 40 million, driven by growth of more than one million people that year, the bulk of them temporary and permanent residents. The pace of immigration has spooked premiers, who have pointed to housing stock and the health care and education systems as evidence that they are unable to absorb so many newcomers.

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An October 2023 Fraser Institute report concluded that, in 2022, Canada’s population had grown by 4.7 people per new unit of housing on average. In New Brunswick, the population had grown by 11.3 people per new unit of housing. The increased population and scarcity of housing are, in part, responsible for rising rental and home purchase prices across Canada.

Since 2017, the federal government has distributed nearly $750 million to provincial and municipal governments to “alleviate asylum-related housing pressures,” according to a January 2024 news release, and spent around $2 billion on supports for asylum seekers and refugee claimants.

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