Humanitarian response to Ukraine war a model for other crises: minister

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This article was published 06/06/2023 (1079 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canada’s humanitarian visa program for Ukrainians who have fled war has been a “major success,” the federal immigration minister said Tuesday as he promised ongoing settlement support.

Speaking in Winnipeg, Sean Fraser, minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, said the government has received about one million applications under the Canada-Ukraine authorization for emergency travel, although he didn’t provide an updated figure of how many Ukrainians currently live in Canada under that program.

The deadline to apply for the three-year emergency travel authorization and resulting benefits is July 15.

Fraser reiterated his government’s promise to increase funding for settlement services and make those services available to Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion, even though those services aren’t normally available to people who hold temporary visas.

He said the government is checking with provincial and municipal governments to understand local priorities, but he said current concerns relate to broad increases in immigration, not specific to newly arrived Ukrainians.

He acknowledged a lot of Ukrainians travelled to Canada in a very short time: 157,885 people arrived under the emergency travel authorization program from March 2022 to May 2023.

“It’s been an interesting experience, and seeing people deal with an extraordinary increase in the volume of newcomers who arrive in a very short period of time, has posed real challenges for communities. At the same time, I’ve yet to meet a local official or provincial official who has said anything other than what an opportunity this has been to do right by the world,” Fraser said.

He suggested Canada’s humanitarian visa program could be expanded.

“I’m now starting to think about how we may respond to future crises in the world and deploy a similar strategy we’ve adopted in response to Ukraine,” Fraser said.

“We’ve done something similar to help those who were impacted personally by the earthquakes in Syria and Turkey. This program has been a major shift in the way we do humanitarian programs on a temporary basis in Canada and I think creates an opportunity for us to use those lessons to help serve vulnerable populations around the world.”

katie.may@winnipegfreepress.com