Tory and Trudeau discuss gun crime, transit and refugee claimants

Mayor John Tory and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sat down for a brief meeting at City Hall on Friday.

The two sat side-by-side in the mayor’s office for about 15 minutes to talk about a whole host of issues, including the recent gun violence in Toronto, transit and the refugee claimant issue.

This comes one day after the Prime Minister met with Premier Doug Ford, who said the federal government had put a strain on local and provincial services by encouraging asylum seekers to come to Canada illegally, and that Trudeau’s government should foot 100 per cent of the bill for resettling the newcomers.

But Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship of Canada, Ahmed Hussen, said it’s a shared responsibility.

“We will be there for Toronto but we need Ontario to be part of the solution, we need Ontario to be at the table,” he explained.

“This is a shared responsibility.”

Mayor Tory said he had a conversation with several Ontario mayors before Trudeau’s visit and called their response to the refugee claimant issue “fabulously positive” and that he was “so gratified” by what the other mayors had to say on the issues of jobs and housing.

“They’ve agreed, many of them from different parts of the province, to help,” Tory said. “They talked about jobs that are available that are presently vacant.”

About an hour after the Trudeau and Tory meeting wrapped up, Lisa MacLeod, Ontario’s newly appointed Minister of Children, Community and Social Services, said that the Ford government is compassionate and wants to help but that this is a federal responsibility.

“If Justin Trudeau wants to Tweet out ‘Canada welcomes everybody’ that’s great, but he has to be responsible for that,” she told the media.

“There is an issue of responsibility and to date, from what I’ve seen, and I’ve only been the minister for seven days, there has been a lot of irresponsibility on the part of the federal government.”

Hussen said it isn’t about a choice, it is about a legal obligation the country has to these people, and that the federal government needs the province to be on board.

“These are not choices, these are not things that we can opt out of. This is the law,” he said.

“We’ve signed the Geneva Convention and we have international obligations that require us to provide due process and fair hearings to asylum claimants.”

Hussen said the federal government has already committed $50-million to this issue — $11-million of which will go to the province — and that’s only Phase 1 of the plan.