On Monday’s live stream, Sheila Gunn Reid and Alexa Lavoie discussed the implications of the federal government halting the funding of hotel rooms for asylum seekers.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced last week that federal funding for asylum seekers to stay in hotel rooms will end on September 30. The taxpayer-funded hotel rooms have reportedly cost Canadians over $1 billion since 2020.
The federal government has reportedly been funding hotel rooms for asylum seekers across Canada since 2018 under former prime minister Justin Trudeau.
Sheila explained that despite the announcement sounding positive for conservatives, the negative impact on taxpayers caused by asylum seekers will still be present.
“That doesn’t mean that the asylum seekers are going to go home. What does that mean? It means they’re going to be dumped up to the provinces to take care of, and the municipalities,” she said.
Sheila went on: “They’ll be in your homeless shelters, they’ll be taking up your subsidized housing meant for low-income or upwardly mobile low-income Canadians who need to just stop on their way to something better in subsidized housing.”
“This is going to cause an even worse homelessness and poverty problem in this country because these people who should not be in our country, who are here illegally, are no longer housed by the federal government,” she added.