Windsor to accept more asylum seekers, but renews calls for federal support

As asylum seekers pour across the border between New York and Quebec at near-record numbers, the city is being asked to accommodate even more at area hotels.

Windsor city council unanimously voted to tell Ottawa the city is near capacity and doesn’t have the resources to take in additional asylum claimants beyond the people they’ve already greeted.

Since January, the city has welcomed more than 1,100 refugees who came to Canada via the Roxham Road passage in Quebec. When the refugees enter Canada, the federal government puts the claimants on buses, which have gone to a number of host cities across Canada, including Windsor.

The federal government then leases hotel rooms and places asylum seekers in temporary lodging while they go through the process of getting work permits and processing refugee claims. There are currently 439 rooms leased at three Windsor hotels for these claimants. City staff indicate about 250 of those 1,100 refugees have left Windsor and about 850 remain at area hotels.

According to mayor Drew Dilkens, who has recently held conversations with IRCC minister Sean Fraser, that number could grow even higher.

“The federal government has indicated to us that our peak here in Windsor would be 500 hotel rooms. They don’t anticipate it will go any higher than that,” said Dilkens.

“We're definitely expecting more, though hotels are almost at capacity,” said Windsor’s commissioner of health and human services, Andrew Daher. “But as individuals leave, then, you know, it opens up a little bit more capacity. So it will probably be seen more in the next couple months.”

 

The quick influx of refugee claimants is starting to put a strain on city resources, according to Daher. The city is responsible for Ontario Works, which is assisting with applications and getting work permits in the hands of refugees so they can legally get a job in Canada.

Dilkens also advised Monday evening that the feds are looking elsewhere in Canada, including the Maritimes, Prairies and other Ontario cities like London to place recent refugee claimants.

“They’re looking across Canada to distribute folks so as not to put any undue pressure, any more undue pressure, on communities,” Dilkens said.

In the meantime, Dilkens said the city is trying to find the “silver lining” of taking in so many refugee claimants at once by assessing their skills and fast-tracking the process to get them work permits.

“How do we how do we find the silver lining and try and match these folks to open positions? We know we have a skilled labor shortage,” said Dilkens, who also noted as the Spring and Summer tourism seasons approach, the federal government is “alive” to the issue that Windsor will need hotel capacity.

“We have businesses that rely on it, there are a whole host of expectations, especially this year, as we're sort of out of the worst of COVID that things will resume, become more normal now that we're in a different place,” he said. “And so really, I get the sense that the federal government is really alive to the issue, and has made the commitment that 500 rooms would be our cap here in Windsor.”

The city also renewed calls to the federal and provincial governments to make the city whole for all of the additional services and resources it’s putting into accepting such a high volume of asylum-seekers.

“We want to welcome them with open arms. But we just want to say to the federal provincial governments that we need additional funding in order to do this. And we just can't keep doing this with the resources that we have right now,” said Daher.

“The city of Windsor is a very welcoming and diverse community. And we will continue to welcome anyone into our community because we value their contributions.”