Ottawa Has Spent $769M on Hotels, Meals for Refugees and Illegal Immigrants in 2023

Asylum seekers cross the border at Roxham Road into Canada on Feb. 9, 2023. The Canadian Press/Ryan Remiorz

Federal funding of hotel rooms and meals for refugee applicants and illegal immigrants cost $769 million this year, with the length of hotel stays ranging from weeks to months, according to the Department of Immigration.

“There are two mechanisms of funding. The first one is the interim lodging sites, which are the hotels,” said Nathalie Manseau, chief financial officer for the immigration department, during her testimony at the Senate National Finance Committee.

“The anticipated expenditure for this fiscal year is $557 million. We still have a few months in the year, so it’s anticipated spending. The other is the interim housing assistance program, the $212 million.”

Various municipalities in Canada submit requests for reimbursement and the immigration department assesses the requests to provide reimbursements up to $212 million, Ms. Manseau said, as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter. Around half of that—$100 million—was allocated to municipalities in the Greater Toronto Area.

Ms. Manseau did not provide a figure for how many refugees and illegal immigrants were accommodated at $769 million.

According to the Immigration Department’s May 4 Inquiry Of Ministry tabled in the House of Commons, room and board for illegal immigrants at a single Québec border crossing cost the equivalent of $1,220 per person. For 105,315 illegal immigrants who crossed into Canada at Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, the cost totalled $127.5 million over five years.

The Inquiry document said the immigration department booked rooms for illegal immigrants nationwide, including in Surrey, B.C., Winnipeg, Niagara Falls, Windsor, Ottawa, Cornwall, Ont., Moncton, Fredericton, Halifax, and St. John’s as well as numerous municipalities in Québec: Anjou, Brossard, Dorval, Laval, Longueuil, Montréal, Point-Claire, Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, St-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Saint-Laurent.

Back in February 2023, the city of Niagara Falls said it was struggling to accommodate the nearly 3,000 asylum seekers who had been transferred to the municipality to stay in hotel rooms. The city said 40,000 people rely on tourism for their income, and the influx of asylum seekers was displacing tourist accommodation and draining city resources.

The Budget Office said in a 2018 report that the federal cost of illegal immigration averaged from $16,666 to $33,700 depending on the length of appeals to remain in the country.

“Per migrant costs are projected to rise over time,“ the report said. ”This is largely due to longer projected wait times for migrants to complete the entire asylum claim process.”

U.S. President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reached a deal in March 2023 to update the Safe Third Country Agreement between the two countries. In response to Canada’s request for assistance to limit the number of illegal immigrants entering the country, a deal was reached to allow both countries to turn away migrants caught between official points of entry along the border.

Previously, because the agreement only applied to official border crossings, a loophole meant migrants from the U.S. could illegally cross into Canada at locations such as Roxham Road between Quebec and New York State.