John McCallum, the immigration, refugees and citizenship minister, says Canada is on course to welcome 13,000 people fleeing Syria in the next six weeks

As several countries across Europe look to cut the number of Syrian refugees flowing across their borders, Canada is ramping up its response to the crisis, pushing ahead with plans to airlift more than 13,000 refugees into the country in the next six weeks.

It is an unprecedented operation for Canada, said John McCallum, the country’s immigration, refugees and citizenship minister. “Canada has many times in the past decades accepted significant waves of refugees,” he told the Guardian in an interview at his constituency office. “But I think this is making history in Canada in the sense that we’ve never done it so fast.”

The ambitious undertaking – expected to cost the Canadian government about C$680m ($472m/£335) – has become one of the most prominent policies of the country’s new government. The Liberal party, led by Justin Trudeau, won a landslide victory in October with a manifesto of bold campaign promises, including bringing 25,000 government-assisted refugees to the country by the end of 2015.

(By way of comparison, after the Vietnam war, Canada welcomed 137,000 refugees from south-east Asia – but that was over a period of 20 years.)

The current target has since been softened to 25,000 arrivals within a four-month span. More than 11,800 Syrian refugees have landed in Canada since the resettlement program launched in November, with just under half of them sponsored by private citizens who commit to covering expenses and helping the newcomers settle into their new lives. For McCallum, a prominent economist who was first elected to parliament in 2000, the focus is now on bringing about 13,200 to Canada by the end of February.



It is an operation fraught with challenges. November’s deadly attacks in Paris left Canadian officials fending off questions about whether public security was being compromised by the tight deadline. The resulting delay means the government is entering its most ambitious phase just as many leaders in Europe are under pressure to crack down on the number of asylum seekers crossing their borders. And as groups across Canada scramble to arrange housing, schooling and long-term support for refugees, McCallum worries that public support could dwindle if newcomers are seen to be pampered.



In an effort to mitigate concerns about security, 500 officials were sent to Jordan and Lebanon to set up what McCallum described as a “one-stop shop”, where every potential newcomer undergoes security interviews, fingerprinting and iris scans. Those selected enter Canada as full-fledged permanent residents.



The screening, he hoped, will help prevent situations like the New Year’s Eve mass assaults on women in Cologne, Germany, as will the country’s controversial decision to turn away unaccompanied male refugees amid security concerns. “That wasn’t the reason we did it, but later, when we heard about what was going on in Germany, that’s one reason why that sort of thing would be less likely in Canada,” he said.



Trudeau greets Syrian refugees as Canada prepares for more arrivals Read more

In December, the first group of Syrian refugees under the Liberals’ plan landed in Toronto. Their arrival made headlines around the world, primarily because of who was there to greet them: Trudeau, the country’s prime minister. Much of the media seized on the opportunity to contrast Canada with its southern neighbour, where the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was calling for a ban on Muslims entering the United States. “Donald Trump is not the United States,” said McCallum, who noted that the US government has expressed its support for Canada’s resettlement effort in several conversations.



Trudeau’s warm welcome at the airport, he said, captured how most Canadians see the issue of Syrian refugees. “There’s a large amount of support. I’m not naive, it’s not 100% but its a large proportion of Canadians who are onside, enthusiastic and contributing to this.”



Now the push is on to transform this support into tangible resources that can help Syrian refugees navigate their new lives in Canada. The coming weeks will see thousands of refugees arrive on Canadian soil, many of them government-assisted refugees who are much more vulnerable than those being privately sponsored. “They tend to know nobody in the country, they probably have never been on an airplane before, they generally don’t speak a word of English or French and they often don’t have a huge amount of education,” said McCallum.



As the number of Syrian refugees in Canada has steadily risen in recent weeks, so have reports of local settlement services being stretched – and at times overwhelmed – by the sudden demand for services ranging from language training to affordable housing. So far this week, groups in Halifax, Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa have asked the government to temporarily halt the arrival of new government-assisted refugees, as they struggle to find permanent housing for recent arrivals. “The timing just needs to be spread out a bit, it’s just been this huge influx over a two-week period,” Leslie Emory of the Ottawa Immigrant Community Services Organization told the Canadian Press.



McCallum described the operation as a work in progress. “Whenever you settle large numbers of people, it’s never totally smooth. It’s always a little bit messy.” By the end of 2016, the government aims to have at least 10,000 privately sponsored refugees as well as 25,000 government-assisted refugees settled in Canada. Depending on Canadians’ appetite to continue sponsoring refugees, the government could increase the number of privately sponsored refugees, meaning the actual number of Syrian refugees arriving in Canada this year will probably be somewhere between 35,000 and 50,000.



The final total will depend on the government’s ability to strike a balance between helping the newcomers settle into life in Canada without being seen as favouring them over other vulnerable groups, said McCallum. He pointed to housing as an example.

“There’s a shortage of social housing, some Canadians have been waiting one or two years. They won’t be impressed if a refugee who has just arrived from Syria is put at the front of the line,” said McCallum. When the government formally launched the resettlement program in November, social media lit up with an erroneous post from years earlier that suggested refugees receive more financial assistance than Canadian pensioners. It was shared tens of thousands of times before being debunked by government officials.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest John McCallum, left, announces the refugee resettlement program alongside the defence minister, Harjit Sajjan, in Ottawa on 24 November 2015. Photograph: Chris Wattie/Reuters

McCallum has also been closely watching events in Europe, acutely aware that any social backlash could spark further incidents like the one in Vancouver earlier this month, when dozens of newly arrived refugees were pepper-sprayed at a welcome event being held by the Muslim Association of Canada. It was an isolated incident, said McCallum, pointing to the fact that Canada – unlike many countries in Europe – does not have any major political party that opposes immigration.



As Angela Merkel faces mounting pressure to limit Germany’s open-door refugee policy and countries such as Sweden and Denmark seek to crack down on the number of asylum seekers crossing their borders, McCallum is hoping Canada’s diverse fabric will help maintain public support for the government’s plans. “We’re sitting in Markham,” he pointed out, a city of some 340,000 on the outskirts of Toronto that ranks as Canada’s most diverse municipality. In 2014, the city attracted the attention of German ministers who asked to meet the local mayor to discuss integration and building a multicultural society.



Just a 10-minute drive from McCallum’s office, a mosque and a synagogue sit side by side, sharing a parking lot. “It’s a small example of communities often at war with each other that get along just fine,” he said. “I’m not saying we’re perfect by any means. We have our problems, we have our challenges. But by and large, I think Canada has succeeded more than others in building a diverse, multicultural society.”



This diversity, along with a geographic location that affords Canadian authorities the ability to screen all potential migrants, makes it hard to draw parallels between the Canadian and European approach to the Syrian refugee crisis, said McCallum, as does the vast difference in the scale of the issue. “We’re not pretending that this will solve the whole problem, but at least we’re giving a good place to live for 25,000 and hopefully more.”

