"The rising volume of asylum claims, along with the longer duration of eligibility [under the Interim Federal Health Program] caused by extended determination times, has been an important growth driver in recent years [of steeply rising health costs in Canada]."

"[Resettled Gazans received $41 million in various benefits; the Interim Housing Assistance Program was given $400 million and $66.4 million was described as funding "temporary accommodations to asylum seekers." 

Parliamentary Budget Office report

 

"Rejected asylum claimants are now receiving better health care than many Canadians who have paid into a system their entire life."

"At a time when six million Canadians cannot find a family doctor and are waiting for care, it's unacceptable that bogus asylum seekers are receiving better health benefits than Canadians." 

MPs Dan Mazier/Michelle Rempel Garner, shadow ministers Health and Immigration 

A new report shows Ontario hospitals spent $9.2 billion on private, for-profit nursing and staffing agencies over the past decade, a figure that doubled between 2013 and 2023. Critics of private agencies urge Ontario to phase them out, calling them a ‘band-aid on a gaping wound.’ CBC

 

A new analysis by the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer reports that it will cost Canadians a record $1-billion this year to pay for health-care premiums of refugee claimants, some of whom continue receiving free health care even while their claims have been rejected. Costs are ballooning as a result of an unprecedented number of foreign nations in Canada, representing a five-fold increase from  six years earlier when the cost totalled $211 million annually.

 

 

Looking ahead to the future, the cost projection reaching into 2030 sees $6.2 billion being laid out for refugee claimants' health care. Even asylum claimants whose refugee applications have been rejected can access the benefits of the Federal Health Program. The level of care being offered to refugee claimants surpasses that given to the average Canadian citizen where, in addition to hospital and surgical care, the IFHP covers dental care, vision care, pharmacare and other services not covered by general public health plans. 

 

This, at a time when hospitals are overwhelmed by a surge in demand on their services, when wait times for surgery lead to early deaths, amidst a shortage of doctors and nurses and hospital beds. A time when six million Canadians cannot access the services of a family practitioner.

 

The surge in both immigration/refugee/migrant levels into the country amounting to about an increase of a  third of the population falls between the period of 2015 to the present, a decade altogether where two Liberal-led governments in Canada have fuelled both a stupendous increase in the population and a concomitant increase in the cost of  welfare and all manner of social services, extending even to a higher cost of living for all Canadians where housing prices have soared.

 

Figures released by the Immigration and Refugee Board indicate 299,614 foreign nationals in Canada await their refugee claim results, representing over a 1,800 percent increase from the number -- 16,048 --  in Canada when the Trudeau Liberals took office in 2015. Tens of thousands of illegal border crossers entered the U.S. on tourist visas planning to enter Canada illegally, where they then made refugee claims. Similarly foreign nationals who entered Canada on  student visas, claimed refugee status once their visas expired and they were expected to return to their home countries.

 

A refugee claimant arrives at the Roxham Road border crossing at the US-Canada border in Champlain, New York. Photo by Lars Hagberg/AFP Getty Images

 

Claimants for asylum may be given immediate access to government benefits, leading to uncontrolled surges in federal spending, and an unsustainable burden to Canadian communities trying to cope with such sudden influxes of foreigners taking advantage of Canada's reputation as an easy country to access entry to, with copious social benefits to be had. The Interim Housing Assistance Program picks up shelter costs and food for asylum claimants. It was revealed that some asylum claimants receive room and board benefits of over $200 daily.

 

Those asylum claimants who are accepted receive food and shelter to the equivalent of $84 daily for meals and $140 a day for hotel rooms. Gazans entering Canada were given exceptional additional federal payouts of some $3,000 each on entering Canada. Some 130,000 people accessed some form of benefit from the Interim Federal Health Program in 2016, a situation that has more than quadrupled to 611,000 according to the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

 

Even an ineligible asylum claimant can reach for at least two years of Canadian health benefits prior to rejection of their claim, given the current 24-month backlog at the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. Benefits can still be accessed until the claimant, if rejected, manages to exhaust all avenues of appeal, which can take years.  

 

An RCMP officer looks on as asylum seekers cross the Canada-U.S. border at Roxham Road . (Charles Contant/CBC)