OTTAWA—Jordan has offered to lease airplanes to Canada to help transport Syrian refugees, with the first group expected to arrive in Canada as early as next week, Immigration Minister John McCallum says.

Jordan’s government offered the planes at commercial rates to begin transporting the thousands of refugees expected to be processed at a new centre near the Jordan-Syrian border, McCallum told reporters in a conference call.

“(The) airplanes will be available to us as and when they’re needed, in a number that we require,” McCallum said. “So it’s a very flexible arrangement which is very advantageous for Canada.”

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McCallum and Health Minister Jane Philpott spoke to reporters after a visit to Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp, home to some 80,000 Syrians fleeing their country’s nightmarish civil war.

Zaatari figures to be an early source of refugees coming to Canada; with a new processing centre, officials hope to clear 500 Syrians a day for a new life in Canada.

McCallum admits they’re not quite there yet. But he praised the government of Jordan for helping clear one of the biggest bureaucratic hurdles facing the refugees — exit visas from their initial host country.

Not so for the other two countries Canada hopes to draw 25,000 refugees from by the end of February. McCallum referred to continuing “challenges” with Lebanon in obtaining exit visas. Turkey, where refugees are being assisted by the government rather than the United Nations, is still in an “earlier stage” for processing prospective new Canadians.

Neverthless, McCallum remains optimistic that the government can hit its amended target of 25,000 by the end of February 2016.

“It remains our firm objective and we are working very hard to make it happen,” McCallum said.

“And notice that we haven’t put all our eggs in one basket. We have three countries — Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon . . . . By spreading our eggs across those three countries, we are certainly working very hard to hit those targets.”

McCallum said the government still has no firm date for the arrival of the first group of Syrian refugees, but said it could be as early as next week. More important than the first arrival, McCallum said, is to see that the plane is followed by others as quickly as possible.

Ontario is prepared to take as many as 4,000 refugees by the end of the year, Health Minister Eric Hoskins told The Canadian Press on Monday. With roughly 40 per cent of Canada’s total population, Hoskins said the province is willing to do its part.

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Hoskins said Ontario has identified a number of sites that can house the refugees on a temporary basis, while longer-term solutions are found.

“We have sites identified. Some of those sites have taken the extra step of ensuring they are prepared to accommodate the refugees, but we’ll see if that type of facility is in fact required,” Hoskins said.

“It will depend partly on the numbers that arrive. We were thinking maybe 1,000 a day. Now the federal government is thinking somewhat fewer than that and it’s over a longer period of time.”

McCallum committed to updating the public on how the initiative is progressing in the coming weeks and months.