Christy Clark’s vision of resettling refugees across B.C. a little blurry

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Premier Christy Clark says British Columbia is prepared to open its arms to receive Syrian refugees – as many as 3,500 individuals before the year is out. Canadians, she reminded those who may have forgotten, are "compassionate people who have prosperity to share."

Behind the big-hearted stance, however, is an unfinished idea of what this will look like.

Ms. Clark wants the new arrivals distributed across the province. "We want to make sure that refugees who are settling in British Columbia are settling around the breadth of the province if we can," she told reporters last week. "Housing affordability is tough, we all know, in the Lower Mainland, and there's an abundance of jobs in some regions of the province where they are begging for people to come."

Affordable housing is going to be a challenge in the Lower Mainland. But there are other, equally fundamental needs that cannot currently be met outside of the region.

"This is a humanitarian program, they are not temporary foreign workers," said Chris Friesen, who heads the settlement programs for the Immigrant Services Society of B.C.

"You can send planeloads of refugees to northern communities, but if there are no specialized supports in place – if the health-care system is not responsive, if the education system is not ready for classrooms of children with refugee backgrounds – then you can be sure they will be on a bus heading south to Vancouver."

The Immigrant Services Society has four decades of experience in this arena, and it is the federal government's main contractor for providing resettlement services for government-assisted refugees in B.C. More than 1,600 refugees settle in the province each year, so there is a wealth of experience available.

Dylan Mazur is executive director of the Vancouver Association for the Survivors of Torture. His organization has already assisted a number of Syrian refugees, and he cautions that the families who will soon arrive here are going to need more than a roof and a job résumé to become the successful citizens that Ms. Clark envisions.

"Some have experienced torture, some have experienced sexual violence, some have witnessed both," Mr. Mazur said. "Some clients have seen people killed and dismembered in the street, they have been displaced from their homes and haven't had adequate access to food or water. And then there is the whole trauma of the migration process."

Half of the new arrivals will likely be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the experiences they are fleeing.

Groups in communities, including Nelson and Campbell River, have called Mr. Mazur asking for help in arranging counselling and mental-health support for the refugees they intend to sponsor. "The truth of the matter is, we don't have the resources to go out into these communities," he said. "I think policy-makers misunderstand refugee mental health. … It is best to try to settle people in areas where there are services available – settlement services, language services, primary and mental-health services."

The Shirley Bond, Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training, has been delegated to execute the Premier's vision. She has spent the past few months analyzing what support is available, and where. But with the accelerated timetable of the Trudeau government in Ottawa, those details are not yet ironed out.

Most refugees, including 300 Syrian families who have already arrived here, settle in the Lower Mainland. However, Ms. Bond bristled at the suggestion that there is no capacity elsewhere to welcome Syrian families in the coming months. In her own community of Prince George, the local mosque has 40 volunteers prepared to assist newcomers. "It's premature for people in the Lower Mainland to suggest there is nowhere else in the province that can support refugees," she said in an interview. "That work is well under way."

The 25,000 refugees that Canada has agreed to take before the end of the year will not be the last. If British Columbia wants to, it can develop the capacity to share its prosperity with more newcomers across the province. It will require Ottawa and Victoria working together to develop an integrated plan – something that is entirely possible, even if it doesn't happen overnight.