Jesse Winter, Centretown News
Rev. Anthony Bailey is a member of the mayor’s advisory council on refugees. Two weeks ago, the world was stunned and outraged by photos of the body of drowned three-year-old Alan Kurdi lying face-down on a Turkish beach.
Many are now wondering what can be done and what will be done in light of this humanitrian crisis. The Conservative government pledged to accept 10,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees if re-elected. On a local level, Ottawans are wondering what can be done within their own communities.
On Sept. 9, Mayor Jim Watson held an impromptu meeting with leading community members at Lansdowne to discuss the Syrian refugee crisis.
Fred Awada, executive director at the Lebanese & Arab Social Services Agency, attended the meeting. “We’re trying to accumulate a critical mass of individuals who are representatives and agents of a multitude of sectors within the economy and putting forth a strategy for basically expediting the process on a local level (to) ease the resettlement process for these individuals,” he says.
Awada wondered about transporting the refugees to their new communities, how to connect them with support systems to ease the transition and how to make sure they have access to basic needs like medical care, clothing, and housing. These are all questions he hopes to discuss more fully at the next meeting. He says that certain philanthropic organizations such as the United Way and the Community Foundation of Ottawa are going to be approached for fund-raising strategies.
Rev. Dr. Anthony Bailey of Parkdale United Church also attended the meeting. His church has had experience with sponsoring refugee families in the past.
The United Church of Canada and its congregations are sponsorship agreement holders, which are typically faith-based, community or service organizations that agree to sponsor refugees upon their arrival in Canada. Parkdale United began the process of sponsoring a Syrian refugee family in August 2014. The family was in a refugee camp in Jordan at the time. “Filling out the forms actually took a number of days to do; it wasn’t done in one sitting. They’re so complex; there are about 35 pages that you have to go through,” says Bailey.
The documents were sent in October, translated at the refugee camp, signed by the family and sent back around December.
But by then, the government had changed the forms, requiring the process to be repeated. The church filled out the new forms and couriered them in January 2015.
But the church lost contact with the family and hasn’t heard from them since.
“What we did hear before we lost contact with them was their tremendous frustration.‘Why are they making us do this again? We’re desperate to leave this place, why are they making it so hard?’That’s the last thing we heard from the family,” recalls Bailey. The forms were changed again in June of this year.
Despite these difficulties, the church was able to successfully sponsor a Palestinian refugee family five years ago.
The family was supported by the church for nearly two and a half years.
The children attended school, the parents found jobs, they moved to Hamilton, and have since become Canadian citizens.
Bailey says that those at the Sept. 9 meeting took the opportunity to reflect on Ottawa’s role resettling Vietnamese refugees in 1979 and 1980.
“The capacity and the will have been there, so we’re saying ‘Why can’t we do that now?’” he asks.
Due to the short notice of the previous meeting, Watson will be hosting a town meeting and information session on Oct. 1 at city hall.
The meeting will be open to the public, and more community leaders are expected to attend.