Ottawa Mission facing influx of refugees and asylum claimants

The Ottawa Mission is dealing with a major influx of refugees and asylum claimants who have nowhere else to go.

CEO Peter Tilley told Newstalk 580 CFRA's "Ottawa Now with Kristy Cameron" that what he first thought was a "blip" has become a pattern.

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"This one caught us by surprise, in a sense, because we're under so much pressure on so many fronts… and what we thought was originally a blip became an ongoing stat, a trend," he said. "The number of asylum seekers and refugees lining up to book into the Mission is at record levels, three to four times higher than we would normally see at any time."

Tilley said of the 228 new people who booked into the Ottawa Mission between June 1 and Aug. 14, 87 identified as asylum seekers or refugees.

Earlier this summer, images of refugees and asylum seekers sleeping on the streets of Toronto outside a shelter intake centre caught national attention, prompting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to call the situation "unacceptable in a country like Canada."

The Trudeau government unveiled last November a plan to welcome up to 500,000 immigrants to Canada per year by 2025, including more than 70,000 refugees.

Many refugees and asylum claimants are arriving by air, largely in Quebec and Ontario, federal data show. According to the Canada Border Services Agency, there were 4,350 asylum claims at Canadian airports in June, compared to 1,360 a year prior.

Tilley said that's what's happening in Ottawa.

"Many of these people have come from Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, or Nigeria and they come by plane, a lot of them," he said. "It just seems the process stops there when the plane lands. Many of them have not had the follow-up supports."

He said housing workers who are normally trying to find housing for people moving out of the shelter are now busy trying to help people navigate the process of registering as refugees.

"This is not what they expected when they came to Canada. I'm sure they thought they'd be in some form of government supported housing and not a homeless shelter in dorm rooms of four or eight people," Tilley said.

CEO Peter Tilley stands outside The Ottawa Mission at 35 Waller St, Ottawa on Aug. 22, 2023. (Peter Szperling/CTV News Ottawa)

"We need some form of intervention from some level of government, I believe, to right this and steer these refugee claimants in the right direction with the supports that are part of coming to Canada," He continued. "When you offer up an immigration policy that opens up and says, 'Please, we want to help, come to Canada,' that's the Canadian way, but I don't think the Canadian way is ending up in a homeless shelter when you're single and if not, you're going to end up in a motel or Matthew House is going to scramble to find you a family setting."

Tilley said Matthew House, a non-profit refugee support organization, was already over capacity earlier this summer, before the number of people seeking shelter at the Mission began to rise.

"We've seen what happened in Toronto… It's happening in Montreal, that we're aware of, and it's certainly happening here in Ottawa," Tilley said.

He said the Mission was not prepared for the influx of refugees and asylum claimants, being so busy with other local issues. He said any donations are welcome.

"Any public help will help us help these people and get them off on the right foot while we continue to deal with our number of issues here, brought on by no affordable housing and addictions and mental health and other issues we expect to be dealing with an a daily basis," he said.

You can make donations to the Ottawa Mission on its website. 

Influx of shelter-seekers using rec centres: councillor

Alta Vista ward Coun. Marty Carr says the increasing number of people who need shelter is keeping two community centres from being reopened as they're still needed to house people.

Several rec centres in the city were used as physical distancing centres during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to provide additional space for overcrowded shelters downtown. Right now, the Dempsey Community Centre houses single women and the Bernard-Grandmaître Arena houses single men. There are 58 women and 76 men staying in those shelters at present.

While those physical distancing centres were only ever meant to be temporary, Carr says there are still too many people in need of shelter space.

"There's been a cycle of different facilities, mostly in wards 12 and 18, Rideau-Vanier and Alta Vista. We were never able to exit them just because there's such a need in the city right now," Carr told Newstalk 580 CFRA's Ottawa at Work with Patricia Boal. "We're at 100 per cent capacity in both of those community centres now."

Carr says she sees a disconnect between federal government policy to bring refugees to Canada and the funding needed to support them.

"The funds have to follow. We don't have the social structure in place for such a rapid growth. We're waiting for some more dollars to trickle down, hopefully, to help," she said.

The rising cost of living and financial pressures caused by the pandemic are also contributing she said.

"We're seeing a lot of people that are falling out of housing, that aren't making their rents and need a place to stay, so you can really see the impacts all over the system."

In July, city council approved a new transitional housing strategy that includes boosting the municipal rent subsidy for people moving out of shelters.

Carr says the city plans to return the community centres to their former use, but the city might need to take a more active role in housing.

"Given the fact that the city has had little success in finding places to move people, I think we're at the point now where the city itself has to move towards acquiring properties and working with the non-profit sector to acquire properties, given the challenges we've had with people renting to us."

The programs that used to run out of the two community centres have been affected by their conversion to shelters, which Carr says creates another kind of stress.

" It made sense during the pandemic to use the community centres when there was no programming and they were closed but we're now at a point where you see one vulnerable population being pitted against another and that's not a situation we want to find ourselves in."

--With files from The Canadian Press.