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Wynne says the province hopes to resettle 10,000 refugees by the end of 2016, though she notes the provincial government doesn’t have the power to sponsor those refugees.

Most of Ontario’s contribution will help “expedite the resettlement of refugees all across Ontario and support them as they build new lives here,” Wynne said.

“The funding we’ve committed today will help us work with individuals, with faith based groups and with community organizations to reach our goal,” she said.

Wynne said that because the provincial government cannot sponsor refugees, she can’t do anything concrete to speed up the process of bringing refugees to Ontario, but she encouraged the federal government to move more quickly.

Wynne and her spouse Jane Rounthwaite have been trying to sponsor a Syrian family with a group from their church since January.

“We have not been able to move that forward,” Wynne said earlier this week. “The bottom line for me is that all of us across the country need to be doing everything we can to help in this humanitarian crisis.”

Canadians have flooded the United Nations children’s agency with an outpouring of cash in the week since the image of a dead Syrian boy on a Turkish beach shocked the world on Sept. 2.

Four million people have fled Syria since the conflict broke out in 2011 and while their plight has captured headlines over time, it wasn’t until that photograph that Canadians coalesced around the need for action.

The government says Canadian aid has already helped provide relief items to more than 3.25 million people in Syria, food assistance to 4.16 million people inside Syria, and clean water to 16.5 million people in Syria.