Sewell: Time for Torontonians to step up to tackle Syrian refugee crisis

We did it with Vietnamese boat people and now Syrian refugees need our help

Rising to the occasion and responding well to the extraordinary Syrian refugee crisis is the kind of challenge Toronto should meet with flying colours.

Each one of us can become a city builder: we can agree to work with our friends to sponsor a Syrian family. It’s a good vision for all of us to be part of. It supports the desire we all have to transcend the smaller parts of our lives.

When the boat people crisis developed out of Vietnam in 1979, Torontonians ensured that more than 20,000 refugees were welcomed to and settled in the Toronto area. That was about half the total number that came to Canada. Some of those refugees have since emerged to be leading citizens in our city, and that makes sense: except for those of us who are aboriginals, we all arrived as refugees and immigrants to this country.

It can happen again. Lifeline Syria, a citizen-based group modelled on Operation Lifeline, the organization which drove the boat people initiative, has gone public to harness community energy, and it’s my feeling this is just what Toronto needs in 2015. (Full disclosure: I am on the steering committee of the group.)

As citizens, we have been wrapped up in messy and dis-spiriting debates about transit, the Gardiner, police carding and other local issues. Now we have a chance to tackle something much bigger.

Syrian Canadians say their colleagues in Syria, many of them professionals who lived in big cities, are dumbfounded that their world has collapsed so quickly and that they have become homeless refugees — some four million fleeing to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, another eight million displaced within Syria.

We can well imagine their plight, and we can respond. In 1979, Ron Atkey, the minister of immigration in Brian Mulroney’s Conservative government, immediately put in place policies and practices that encouraged the boat people to come here.

Stephen Harper’s government is not nearly so welcoming, although Immigration Minister Chris Alexander has said that Canada should accept 10,000 Syrian refugees over three years. That’s a positive start even if many of the new rules make one wonder whether this number will ever be realized.

But here’s where Torontonians can step up to the plate, as they did 35 years ago. If enough groups of people come together to sponsor a refugee family, the federal government will surely recognize it is in its own interests to bend the rules to make it happen. That’s the thought underlying Lifeline Syria. As an organization it can help encourage people to become sponsors; it can educate and support those sponsors; it can make the connections between sponsors, refugees and services; it can advocate for better funding for services as refugees arrive.

Premier Kathleen Wynne and the provincial government have already made a commitment for a successful outcome, providing seed funding to Lifeline Syria and, more importantly, indicating a willingness to give needed financial support to the social agencies that will help integrate Syrian families. Mayor John Tory has spoken in favour of the initiative and has provided city staff as a liaison.

Now we need Toronto citizens to step forward. The general rule in Canada is that sponsors must cover the expenses of the refugee family for the first year: housing, furniture, clothing, food and so forth. For a family of five, it’s thought $25,000 would be needed at a minimum, but shared among a group of 10 sponsors, that’s a doable burden. Obviously, if you have free living space that’s large enough for the family, that saves a considerable outlay. Getting together with your neighbours, fellow workers, members of your faith group or book club or residents group to become a sponsoring group is feasible.

And if you have talked to anyone who sponsored some of the boat people, there’s no more powerful experience than helping a frightened and uncertain family settle here, overcome its fear, find its feet and move ahead in this new and welcoming city.

It’s the kind of shared experience that all of us yearn for, and it stands before us if we take the first few steps.

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