Refugee arrival delays prove costly, frustrating for some Saskatoon sponsorship groups

Refugee sponsorship groups in Saskatoon say empty apartments and basements full of furniture have gone unused for months while they wait for families to arrive.  

For more than a year, members of the P.O.R.C.H. refugee sponsorship group have been storing household items, ready for the day they find out the family is on its way.

But that day has not arrived.

Margi Corbett is part of the group of about 20 people who have applied to sponsor an Iraqi family that has been waiting in Lebanon for about four years.

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Working with the Anglican Diocese of Saskatoon, the group started the process in November 2015.

Frustrated that the family continues to wait in Beirut when the group is ready to host them, Corbett is asking for city council support to help speed up what Corbett calls a "depressing" process.

Process taking too long: Corbett

On Dec. 9, Corbett wrote a letter asking councillors to push the federal government to speed up the process by writing to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Immigration Minister John McCallum.

She hopes pressure from local governments will help encourage the federal government to hire more refugee processing workers.

The City of Vancouver referred a similar motion written by Canada4Refugees, a national group representing private sponsors, to its standing committee on city finance and services in December.   

"We just want to lobby the federal government to do everything they can to make it a little quicker if possible because it just seems like an unbelievably long time to wait," said Corbett. 

Last minute cancellation

Another Saskatoon sponsorship group says it rented an apartment for a Syrian couple whose arrival was cancelled at the last minute.

Paul Denham is the vice president of the Fidelio Group, which was formed in late 2015 to sponsor refugees.

He said his group received a phone call in February saying a Syrian couple would be arriving within a week. They scrambled to rent an apartment and signed a six-month lease.

We just kept the lease. They said 'we'll get you another family.'- Paul Denham, Fidelio Group

But Denham said his group received another call the night before the family was due to arrive saying the family was being sent to a different city in Newfoundland.

He believes the family wanted to be closer to relatives there, but feels immigration services should have notified his group earlier.

"I've never been able to understand why somebody couldn't have figured that out before they actually got to Canada," said Denham.

"We just kept the lease. They said, 'we'll get you another family.'"  

The apartment was empty for four months before a second family arrived.

A sponsorship group formed by the Grosvenor Park and St. Paul's United Churches also found itself paying rent for a family that did not arrive, but for different reasons.

Delays not necessarily processing issue, says sponsor

Group member Wayne Parohl said the family his group applied to sponsor twice missed their flight to Canada.  

He said it was not necessarily a processing issue, and he was happy with the way the federal government was handling refugee processing.

"I think there's all kinds of difficulties over there," said Parohl.

"Whatever happened that our family didn't board the plane in Jordan could be due to processing.

"But it could be due to anything, from something that the family was dealing with over there, or maybe they just changed their mind."

Both the United Church and Fidelio Group have since welcomed Syrian families to Saskatoon. Their groups applied through the Blended Visa Office-Referred Program, which shares the cost of settling families between the government and the sponsorship group.

'Depressing' wait

Members of Corbett's group were also able to bring a Syrian family to the city while they waited for the Iraqi refugees.

But Corbett said it had been depressing for her group to discover how long that family could have to wait to come to Saskatoon.

"We've got everything we need for our family stored in our basements. We've organized ourselves. There's no point in renting an apartment until we know when they're arriving," she said.

"But we've set everything up so that we can quickly move to assist them once we know when they are going to arrive."

Corbett's letter will be presented to Saskatoon city council at Monday's planning, development and community services meeting.

Government caps some sponsorships

In December, the federal government capped the number of new applications for private sponsorship for sponsorship agreement holders (SAH), such as the P.O.R.C.H. group agreement with the Anglican Diocese.

The number of applications for SAH and "group of five" sponsorships accepted in 2017 will be capped at 1,000.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said in December the cap was put in place to address the backlog in processing applications.

It said the number of admissions expected in 2017 is double that seen in 2015.