The main organization tasked with helping Syrian refugees find homes in B.C. is working on a map that will show how many will come to Burnaby.
Chris Friesen, director of settlement services with Immigrant Services Society of B.C., said the projected number for Syrian arrivals hasn’t changed; it’s still 477 to 596 in Burnaby.
ISS put a call out for British Columbians to offer housing for refugees, and the organization has 874 leads, including offers of 440 rooms in people’s homes. The society is going to plug those housing offers into a map to figure out where they can send the new arrivals. Once that map is ready, there should be more accurate numbers on Syrian arrivals for Burnaby.
The federal government is still bringing 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada, but not as quickly as promised during the election. The deadline was originally the end of this year; now only some will arrive in December, and the remainder will come in January and February.
There are 400 Syrians coming to B.C. in December; half are government-assisted refugees, and half are privately sponsored. In January and February, there will be 1,500 to 1,700 government-assisted refugees arriving from Syria, according to Friesen.
