At least 10,000 Syrian refugees are expected to come to Canada under private sponsorships (in addition to the 25,000 the Liberals say the government will sponsor).

Nancy Addison, a retired teacher, is sponsoring three of those refugees to move to Jasper, Alberta, a small town in the Rockies. We speak to her and Gail Millard, the refugee coordinator for the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton, who connects sponsors to applicants.

Farah Malik, a Pakistani refugee who came to Canada about three years ago, talks about abandoning her family and friends back home.

UPDATE – We asked Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada for a response to Farah Malik’s charges that they regularly lose applications and people have to pay to re-submit. Their response reads, in part:

“Sometimes applicants disregard the instructions which appear on our website which explain how to submit an application — for instance applicants may try to mail a paper application directly to an Embassy. In this scenario the application may not reach the correct address or appropriate visa section. Applicants may also attempt to apply online but fail to complete the process properly. In this scenario no application will be received and the client will not receive an acknowledgement of receipt.

All applications which are submitted to a visa office correctly – either paper applications submitted via a VAC or online – are tracked by the visa office using a data base. Visa office staff are able to query for applications using the electronic data base on a daily basis and determine which require action using several variables – such as the date the application was received, whether requested documents or a medical result has been received or when biometric results were entered.”