Advocates call for urgent response to Toronto shelter system issues affecting asylum seekers

TORONTO — Advocacy groups and shelter operators are calling on all levels of government to immediately help Toronto’s overstretched shelter system cope with the high numbers of refugee claimants who are unhoused.

Representatives from the Rwandan Canadian Healing Centre, Soujourn House, Christie Refugee Welcome Centre and other groups say the federal, provincial and municipal governments should be ashamed for not doing enough to help asylum seekers who’ve recently arrived in the city.

Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie said in May that the number of asylum seekers in Toronto’s shelter system grew by 500 per cent in 20 months from a low of 530 per night in September 2021 to more than 2,800 throughout the month of May.

She announced that Toronto would be referring asylum seekers away from at-capacity shelters towards federal programs and called on the federal government to provide the city with more funding.

Kizito Musabimana of the Rwandan Canadian Healing Centre says advocates working with asylum seekers are tired of different levels of government pointing fingers at one another, instead of working together to solve the bed shortage crisis in Toronto’s shelter system.

Mayor Olivia Chow, who took office on Wednesday, has also sounded an alarm over the issue, calling the high numbers of unhoused refugee claimants a “crisis we are facing right now on the streets.”