Syrian refugee program sparks political push for other humanitarian settlement
OTTAWA — This fall, federal public servants are expected to go to Northern Iraq to figure out how to get hundreds of people from there to Canada as refugees.
It’s the first time Canadian staff will go to Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, expressly for that purpose.
Private sponsorship groups and the government have been trying to find a way to get refugees out of the area for months, but have been stymied by a lack of Canadian resources on the ground.
That the Immigration Department is sending in a team is one result of ongoing political pressure on the Liberal government to continue a flat-out push to resettle refugees in the spirit of the program that saw 25,000 Syrians brought to Canada in a matter of months.