Ottawa has finally taken the first step toward meeting its responsibilities for the surge of refugee claimants that has left Toronto’s shelter system scrambling to find beds.

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen announced $50 million in funding late last week to help offset the costs of providing for thousands of asylum seekers walking across the border from the United States.

Toronto alone has budgeted nearly $65 million since 2017 to provide food and shelter for refugee claimants. So, with just $11 million earmarked for Ontario, this new funding doesn’t come close to covering all the costs.

But it’s a start. More importantly, it’s an acknowledgement that this is Ottawa’s problem to solve.

Cities like Toronto and Montreal cannot fix what amounts to a global migrant crisis, and they certainly shouldn’t have to foot the whole bill.

This funding will help with the most visible element of the problem, but Hussen also needs to do more to deal with its root causes. That includes tackling the long and growing backlog of cases at the Immigration and Refugee Board.

People should not be sitting in limbo — and sleeping in shelter beds — for months or years, as is often the case, waiting for their claims to be heard and settled.

People who come to Canada seeking safety and a better life should either be settled quickly, with an approved refugee claim, or sent back if their claim is declined. But that’s not happening.

According to the refugee board, under current projections it takes an average of 20 months for a refugee claimant to get a hearing and still more time after that for a decision to be handed down.

That means people are languishing, often unable to find work, for close to two years. That does no one any good.

As of April, there were more than 55,000 refugee claims in the system. And with more new cases added than the board can handle, the backlog has continued to grow.

There are plenty of culprits, from security clearance delays to insufficient personnel to process claims. Belatedly, the Liberal government included additional two-year funding in its latest budget to hire more staff so it can hear more cases each month.

The refugee board says that once it’s fully staffed, and using a new proportionate scheduling system that will see Montreal’s office focus more on the cases of those irregularly crossing the border from the United States, things will get better.

The board says it will be able to finalize many of those cases within 12 months. A year, instead of closer to two, is an enormous improvement. But only because of how bad things have become. It’s still too long.

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How long will it be before refugees coming through official channels see their cases take even longer because of this new scheduling approach? And what will happen two years from now when the additional funding has been spent?

This feels more like the latest Band-Aid stretched over the latest problem, rather than a permanent solution to an overburdened system.