That’s in addition to $551.6 million sent to provinces and municipalities since 2017 via the Interim Housing Assistance Program, which covers “extraordinary costs of interim housing for asylum seekers.”
“Maybe there is a middle ground between the hotel and the street. But what is the middle ground? Putting them up in community housing that’s already sorely lacking? I find that those who say Canada is ‘rolling out the red carpet’ for migrants are going too far,” she said. In June 2022, the federal government said it would begin redistributing asylum claimants from Roxham Road to various cities in Ontario to reduce the “pressure on publicly funded services and accommodation in Quebec.” Since the summer, migrants have been relocated to Ottawa, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Cornwall and a few other communities in Ontario.
IRCC said in February that it had signed a three-month contract with the new owners of another major hotel, the Ramada Inn, on Dec. 29, 2022, to host migrants from Roxham Road. The IRCC’s Lariviere declined to detail how much has been spent on any specific hotel contracts. “I get the impression that its extremely lucrative for certain people — like for the buses and taxis in Plattsburgh that travel to Roxham Road” Muzzi, the St-Bernard-de-Lacolle mayor, said, adding that she considers it a form of “human trafficking.”
Taxi driver Tom is one of a dozen Plattsburgh, N.Y., cab drivers who wait for migrants arriving from New York City at the Greyhound bus terminal to then drive them to Roxham Road, where they will cross the border illegally and make an asylum claim in Canada.Now in his sixties, Tom says he started doing runs from Plattsburgh to Roxham Road in 2006 as a side gig to his job doing custodial services for the city. But business has exploded in recent years.
The number of Canadians who experience homelessness on any given night in Canada is estimated to be minimally 35,000 individuals. Take care of them before these queue jumpers.