GTA asylum seeker reception centre won’t open by winter [Video]

Officials in Peel Region are expressing trepidation about opening a promised welcome centre for refugees near Pearson airport in the absence of guarantees that other municipalities in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) will be able to quickly house them.

“We can’t fully open the reception centre operations until we have some confidence that other municipalities are going to be able to take those asylum seekers,” Peel Region’s director of social development, planning and partnerships Jason Hastings said.  

“You don’t want to aggregate all the demand in Peel for the whole GTHA and not have places to be able to push people out to so that they can get settled in those respective communities,” he told a recent meeting of the region’s Government Relations Committee.

The reception centrewas one of the initiatives that was put forward last year as refugees and asylum claimants were spilling out onto the streets at a …