Article content

A city committee will be asked Wednesday to approve six contracts valued at $108 million to house refugee claimants for the next year.

Those contracts, on the agenda of the economic and community development committee, will provide 800 hotel rooms in Toronto, Brampton, Newmarket and Pickering from July 1, if needed, according to shelter, support and housing spokesman Greg Seraganian.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or City committee asked to approve $108M in hotel contracts for refugees Back to video

That doesn’t include the $24 million already spent to house and feed those in the Radisson Toronto East ($13 million), the Toronto Plaza hotel ($9-million) and the Comfort Hotel Airport North ($2 million) over the past six months.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or

Seraganian said they need to have the multiple purchase orders in place because the city does not have “exclusive rights” to the rooms.

According to the report, the city has the flexibility — with these purchase orders — to “switch to another provider when the hotel/motel operator has previous commitments to another party (i.e. conferences, vacationers).”