Debi Goodwin is a member of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Syrian Refugee Project and author of Citizens of Nowhere, a book about 11 Somali refugees' first year in Canada.
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Long before Canada formalized private citizens sponsoring refugees, my grandmother housed families from European camps after the Second World War. For her, a farmer's wife who never travelled, it was a way to engage with the world, to feel she was doing something. As a small child, I came to understand her purpose from an Estonian couple whom she'd placed with our family. The husband's first wife had been killed by the Germans; the wife's first husband had been killed by the Russians. I witnessed how hard the couple worked to take advantage of the opportunity they had been given.
It is that spirit of wanting to help that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau drew on with his promise to bring in 25,000 government-sponsored Syrian refugees by the end of 2015, creating an urgency that spurred private groups to follow his lead.
Private sponsorship hit its stride in the late 1970s, when Canada successfully brought in 60,000 refugees from Southeast Asia through the matching of government and groups. The two-track approach garnered praise; Australia, Ireland and Switzerland copied it. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, calls Canada's mix of public and private sponsorship a model that should be exported around the world.
After the federal election and the Paris terrorist attacks, Mr. Trudeau extended his deadline by two months to make sure the process "was done absolutely right." Even so, the new target date was only achieved thanks to the 40 per cent of Syrian refugees who came through private sponsorships and a program that blends private and government support.
Our group in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., with members from two churches and the community, relied on churches as official sponsors to bring in two families through the accelerated, blended path. The needed funds poured in from parishioners, local residents and institutions. While the Grace United Church's family of four arrived safely in mid-February and is settling in, the St. Mark's Anglican Church's family of six remains stuck in southern Turkey after government flights stopped and processing slowed.
Our frustration grows daily, especially since our sponsorship was approved in January, we were told the family could arrive imminently, and they were designated as "urgency status high." We are unsure of their safety.
Our chair communicates with the family through Google's translator. What is clear from the garbled texts exchanged is that the family is grateful for the Canadian initiative and eager to get here. The image on the father's phone shows a Canadian flag with hands forming a heart over it. The pictures they send show a miserable room. We haven't had the heart to send them a photo of the lovingly furnished apartment that we rushed to rent and now sits empty waiting for them.
It was easy to ignore the snipes suggesting the Prime Minister used the first arrivals for political theatre. But once the magic 25,000 number was met, the program he earlier called "a whole-country effort" slowed to a trickle, and it is difficult not to become cynical.
Immigration Minister John McCallum's announcement Thursday that Canada will accept more private sponsorship of Syrian refugees is good news for some groups. But getting it absolutely right means finding ways to get Syrian families such as ours, who were lifted up by the hopes they would soon start a new life in Canada, into the homes waiting for them.