Peel Region officials are expressing apprehension about opening the promised refugee reception center near Pearson Airport, in the absence of guarantees that other municipalities in the Greater Toronto Area and of Hamilton (GTHA) will be able to accommodate them quickly.

“We cannot fully open reception center operations until we have certainty that other municipalities will be able to accommodate these asylum seekers,” said Jason Hastings, director of social development. , planning and partnerships in Peel Region.

“You don’t want to lump all the demand in Peel for the entire GTHA and not have places to push people to so they can settle into their respective communities,” he said during a recent meeting of the region’s government. Relations Commission.

THE reception center was one of the initiatives launched last year as refugees and asylum seekers spilled onto the streets of a downtown Toronto reception center on Peter Street, many between them having been sent there after landing at Pearson.

This was also motivated by the death of an asylum seeker camped outside a former Peel Region shelter.

The federal government ultimately offered to provide $7 million for a refugee reception center near the airport. Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown said at the time the center could be operational within months.

But during a press conference on Toronto Winter Services Plan for the homeless population earlier this week, city staff said they still did not have an opening date for the project.

“The St Peter Respite is a very busy place. People continue to arrive there directly from the airport,” Gord Tanner, executive director of accommodation and support services, told reporters.

He said Toronto officials are “still waiting for an opening date” from Peel for the drop-in center, which aims to ease pressure on shelters in the Greater Toronto Area as the first point of contact for asylum seekers.

But Hastings told Peel’s Government Relations Committee that while the reception center could open by February, there are concerns that capacity to accommodate newcomers in the various municipal accommodation systems may still not be available in the GTHA.

“At the moment, I have to say that we question the capacity of other municipalities to accommodate asylum seekers, partly because they do not have tools such as subsidies to be able to house people, but also because they “We’re just short of shelter spaces in some of their communities,” Hastings said.

He added that the region has good working relationships with some of the other municipalities in the GTHA, but the capacity just may not be there.

“We wonder how well we can sort the total number of asylum seekers arriving in the GTHA each month,” he said.

The region and the federal government are working on a schedule

In an email to CP24.com, Mayor Brown hailed the opening of the first floor of the Spectrum Way shelter in Mississauga, a converted four-story office building focused on asylum seekers, as a “milestone.”

The site will serve two functions: a regional reception center offering a stay of up to five days to triage asylum seekers and provide them with key services before they move elsewhere in the GTHA, and a dedicated shelter longer term where asylum seekers can stay for up to 90 days.

The 90-day shelter now has 88 beds, with another 500 expected to be added in the first quarter of 2025.

According to the Region of Peel, the reception center should eventually be able to accommodate up to 179 people. It will offer them a variety of on-site settlement, health and social supports before referring them to places in other municipalities.

However, Brown said its scale and level of cooperation with other municipalities “will depend on federal funding decisions.”

“It was important that we prioritized accommodation beds above all else to ensure we had suitable accommodation capacity heading into the winter months. The reception center component depends on the capacity of other municipalities to accommodate and settle asylum seekers in their communities.

Brown said the region is working with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to determine the “process and timeline” for opening service at the reception center.

In an email to CP24.com, IRCC said it increased its financial support for the project from $7 million to $22 million through the Interim Housing Assistance Program (IHAP) after Peel submitted an updated proposal in July.

The release said IRCC “will continue to collaborate with the Region of Peel” on plans to create a welcome center.

He noted the IHAP program will receive an additional $1.1 billion over three years, with funding in 2026-27 conditional on provincial and municipal investments in “permanent transitional housing solutions for asylum seekers.”

Chow says GTA can’t wait

Asked about the possible delay of the reception center, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said it was necessary now.

“To the good people who are organizing the Peel Welcome Center, do it now,” Chow said when CP24 asked her about the center during a press briefing this week. “The last time this was negotiated was December last year. We are now quickly approaching a year. We look forward to opening this welcome center.

She added that her city is “doing its part,” with a shelter system where more than 50 percent of users are asylum seekers.

“Six thousand asylum seekers are in our shelters,” Chow said. “No other city, no other municipality in Canada has welcomed so many asylum seekers and housed so many asylum seekers. We will continue to do our part.