Hundreds of refugees, asylum seekers who had been camped downtown moved to North York church | CBC News

Some 200 refugees and asylum seekers who had been living on the street outside a downtown Toronto shelter intake office are now staying at a church in North York, according to a pastor.

Pastor Judith James said Tuesday that buses began bringing the people from Peter Street to Revivaltime Tabernacle on Dufferin Street at around 7:30 p.m. Monday.

Men are currently housed in the facility’s gymnasium, while women — including some who are pregnant — were put into two large rooms. All of the refugees and asylum seekers were given an opportunity to shower, James said, and provided with a dinner of pizza and chicken wings. The Jamaican Canadian Association is set to provide breakfast this morning, James said, and nurses will be on site to provide medical care to anyone who needs it.

James stressed that the church and a small number of non-profits currently paying to house the refugees and asylum seekers cannot do so for long without more help.

“We are going to try to do it for as long as we can, but this is a very temporary solution for a very big problem,” James told CBC Toronto.

“We are in need of great help. We need community leaders to step up, we need the [federal] government to step up, we need the province to step up. This is a national crisis.”

A handful of people were still staying outside the shelter intake on Peter Street Tuesday. They told CBC Toronto they chose to stay because they have meetings with immigration lawyers downtown.

Pressure mounts for government response

News of the church taking people in comes as a coalition of groups and advocates has ramped up pressure on all levels of government to act immediately to help newcomers to Canada who have been denied access to Toronto’s overwhelmed shelter system.

Toronto has been turning away refugees and asylum seekers from shelters since the beginning of June and referring them to federal programs. However, many asylum seekers can’t get federal help if their claims haven’t been fully granted, leaving dozens of them stuck in limbo with nowhere to sleep.

WATCH | Refugees sleep outside Toronto shelter after arriving to Canada:

Refugees forced to sleep outside after arriving in Canada

Refugees and asylum seekers say they are being forced to sleep outside because of a lack of housing and adequate shelter space in Toronto. According to city officials, up to 45 per cent of newcomers who call the shelter intake system get turned away.

Toronto city manager Paul Johnson said in a statement this week that about 35 per cent of the 9,000 people who sleep in the shelter system each night are refugees. In the spring of 2022, the city opened 1,500 new spaces reserved specifically for refugee claimants, and they are all now full. While it has funding to support 500 newcomers in the  system, the city is using reserve funds to cover costs of sheltering more than 3,000 people, Johnson said.

“The fact remains that the City does not have additional space and currently has no means to expand the system to keep up with the surging demand for shelter space,” he continued.

City officials met with their provincial and federal counterparts last week to discuss the issue, and those talks were set to resume today. Mayor Olivia Chow said she expects “tangible solutions from all three levels of government that we can implement right away.”

Meanwhile, Liberal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser is set to make an “important immigration announcement” at a news conference in Moncton this morning. Then an hour later, three Toronto Liberal MPs are set to speak to media outside city hall “regarding interim housing for asylum seekers.”

Calls for change

A group of more than 20 advocates has called on the head of Toronto’s shelter system to resign over actions they say have exacerbated the crisis.

In an open letter Monday, advocates called for the resignation of Gord Tanner, the general manager of Shelter Support and Housing Administration (SSHA), over the “repeated mismanagement” of the shelter system.

They say excluding asylum seekers from the shelter system violates Toronto’s Sanctuary City policy, fuels xenophobia and uses refugees as bargaining chips.

“The City of Toronto is denying shelter to refugees,” the letter reads.

“[It] is also telling refugees seeking shelter to call Service Canada in a cruel wild-goose-chase, knowing it cannot lead anywhere.”

Johnson said while the voices of those who signed the letter matter, he stands by Tanner.

“I have every confidence in [Tanner] and in my team who has been working diligently and on an ongoing basis, in partnership with many other experts and community leaders, some of whom are signatories of the letter,” he said in a statement to CBC Toronto.