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People have been pouring into Canada, primarily across unguarded stretches of our border in Manitoba and Quebec, due to immigration crackdowns — or at least the fear of them — in the United States.

The City of Toronto called Thursday for the federal and provincial governments to help cover an unforeseen expense of some $65 million due to the costs of a sudden surge in migrants and refugee claimants, which has swamped the city’s homeless shelter system. In 2016, officials said, there were 459 asylum seekers in city shelters — 11 per cent of the total. This month, the number was approaching 2,400, and 40 per cent of the system.

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Quebec, its own services overloaded, recently reached an agreement with the federal government to disperse the thousands of arrivals across the country. Toronto will receive many.

Photo by Paul Chiasson/CP

Spreading the burden might work as a stopgap. Maybe. But if Canada had figured out how to handle the influx in the first place, we wouldn’t need to be shuffling human beings around from city to city as the best solution to a growing illegal immigration problem.