True North

Most of the homeless refugee claimants staying at the Toronto Plaza Hotel are staying at the hotel for six-month stays before moving on to find permanent housing, says an employee working at the hotel.

Last week a meeting was held at the hotel to go over garbage disposal and other rules of the building because a new wave of asylum seekers moved into the hotel recently.

As exclusively reported by True North, some refugee claimants are purposefully staying within the Toronto shelter system for over six months so they can gain eligibility to a housing allowance that helps pay their rent for up to four years. Another True North investigation revealed that the homeless shelter system is a tiered system, with many asylum seekers who crossed the border illegally into Canada getting better accommodations than the native homeless population.

The Plaza Hotel in North York is a 199-room hotel near the connection of Highways 400 and 401. It’s still fully occupied with around 500 asylum seekers, many of whom are new arrivals. Most of the asylum seekers living at the Plaza are from Africa, predominantly Nigeria, but there are also Mexicans, Romani people from Europe and Middle Easterners currently living there.  

At the beginning of March CBC reported the Plaza was bought by a private developer. The new owner has plans to redevelop the property as a mixed-use development.

The cost per room per night was a discounted rate of $50 under the previous deal with the old owner. (The hotel also offers the homeless staying there food and cleaning services.) Since 2017 the City has spent over $5 million on housing and feeding the homeless staying at the Plaza. The hotel has also had a series of renovations over the past year.

It’s unclear if the costs have gone up for the City under the new owner. The City is currently renewing a monthly contract, so it’s uncertain how much longer refugee claimants will be able to live at the Plaza.

“There may be some adjustments to price, but we’re working with the new owner to stay within our planned budget,” says Toronto shelter support spokesperson Greg Seraganian.

“The City is not aware of any imminent plans for the closure of the building or for a change in services from those currently being offered to the families staying in the hotel. If such a closure were to happen, the City does have contingency plans in place to address this, however, we do not anticipate this in the short term,”said Seraganian.

“I can’t even fathom what they’ll do with an extra 500 people,” said shelter outreach coordinator Greg Cook to CBC at the beginning of March about the possibility of the homeless people staying at the Plaza being moved out, which would add even more of a strain to an already overburdened shelter system.

Last November the City of Toronto was trying to buy the rundown Plaza (35 rooms were closed due to mould problems) to add to the city’s space in its shelter system. The City’s shelter system has been facing a crisis because of the wave of tens of thousands of refugee claimants migrating to Toronto in the past two years.

Both the Plaza and the Radisson Hotel Toronto East have been closed off to the public in order to house the influx of asylum seekers.

There are over 100,000 people waiting for affordable housing units in Toronto.

Justin Trudeau’s honeymoon is over, polls are showing.

The mounting scandal involving SNC-Lavalin and Jody Wilson-Raybould’s testimony against the Prime Minister’s Office has taken a toll on Trudeau’s favour among Canadians.

An Ipsos poll shows his reputation has taken a hit nationally, as 67 per cent of Canadians sided with Wilson-Raybould in her standoff with Trudeau, compared to just 33 per cent agreeing with Trudeau’s handling of things.

The same poll suggested that if an election were held in March, Trudeau would receive only 31 per cent of the vote.

A Mainstreet Research poll published Mar. 31 shows the Liberals trailing the Conservatives, with the Conservative Party of Canada on track to net 37.4 per cent of the vote, compared to just 35 per cent for the Liberals.

“The SNC-Lavalin controversy has stung the Liberals but has not knocked them out. The one question remaining is whether more damage will hit the Liberals because of this issue,” said Mainstreet Research President Quito Maggi.

In British Columbia, a province that plays a key role in any Liberal majority projections, a Research Co online poll found the majority of residents believe other party leaders are better suited to take the reins of the country, compared to Trudeau.

In the poll, which had a sample size of 800, 53 per cent of British Columbians agreed “a different party leader would do things better in Ottawa as Prime Minister than Justin Trudeau.”

What’s more telling about these numbers is that one-quarter of those who voted Liberal in 2015 find themselves looking at other options.

It’s worth noting that Wilson-Raybould herself was one of the Liberals’ star candidates in 2015. She has said she intends to run again as a Liberal in 2019 in her riding, Vancouver Granville.

Included in the 2019 federal budget is approximately $283 million in new spending intended on covering the healthcare costs of the recent influx of illegal border crossers.

Since 2017, approximately 42,000 migrants have crossed into Canada at unofficial border crossings along the US border, 96 per cent of them occurring at Roxham Road.

When entering Canada and awaiting their asylum applications, migrants are granted publicly subsidized healthcare access.

The Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) includes access and coverage for “basic, supplemental and prescription drug benefits”. The policy which covers a variety of treatments and costs also includes mental health/psychiatric services, dental benefits and a variety of examinations.

In addition, illegal border crossers are given access to government housing, social welfare payments, provincial health care services, and they enroll their children in Canadian public schools.

Only a few months ahead of the election, the federal government appears to have taken a harder stance on border security. The same budget also includes $1.1 billion to be put towards increased border enforcement.

Minister of Border Security Bill Blair has also been entertaining a solution to the Safe Third Country Agreement loopholes which allow migrants to cross at irregular points of entry along the US-Canada border.

However, immigration experts who spoke to True North on background agreed it’s highly doubtful America would renegotiate the Safe Third Country Agreement.

With regards to healthcare, the federal government has actually implemented several changes to Canada’s immigration system which makes it easier for immigrants with health problems to enter into the country.

In 2018, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Ahmed Hussen announced a change to admissibility rules which would allow potential immigrants with serious medical issues into Canada.

Former admissibility rules took into account the anticipated healthcare costs immigrants would incur upon the first five-years of their arrival capping them at just under $7,000 per capita. The new Liberal updates nearly tripled the cap which now sits at $20,517.

Critics like True North founder, Candice Malcolm have also pointed out the deep flaws in Canada’s reunification program which allows elderly family members to be granted access to our increasingly strained universal healthcare system.

The government’s mishandling of the crisis at our border has cost taxpayers billions. Keep track of how much Justin Trudeau’s open invitation to the world’s migrants has cost Canadians here.

“We are treading on dangerous ground here, so I’m going to issue my stern warning. I can’t act in a partisan way and it can’t be politically motivated. All of this screams of that. I’m actually uncomfortable having this conversation.” – Jody Wilson-Raybould to Michael Wernick, on tape.