With all of the talk about how we need to accept more refugees, I thought it would be a good idea to offer some suggestions/solutions as to how we can help and improve the refugee acceptance rate.

1. Establish Billeting Programs:

Often when travelling on an exchange or school trip, a family offers to host the traveller. What could work would be having host families to host a refugee, or even a refugee family until more permanent settlement can be found. Funds could be given to the host family for the extra food, toiletries, etc… required but the actual rent aspect would be removed from the refugee funding package. Not having to pay for shelter for all of the incoming refugees would greatly reduce the cost associated with refugees and allow more people to come to Canada, due to more funds being readily available for incoming refugees. This would also be a good experience for host families, as they would be able to learn about the culture of the refugees that they are hosting.

2. Increase Charities and Funds:

Adding boxes like these for refugees create a
substantial amount of increased funds.

When collecting funds in public places like schools, grocery stores, malls, etc.. you very rarely see collections for refugee aid. This should change- increasing the amount of money raised for refugee aid would yet again allow more people to come to Canada as they would be able to afford to put more people through the very costly process required to become a Canadian refugee, as well as increase the amount of money allotted to the programs for refugees after their arrival in Canada. I feel that people would give money to charities collecting for refugees and the charities that do offer assistance to refugees need to be made prevalent in everyday life.

3. Improve Awareness and Educate:

• How often do you see commercials advertising the plight of refugees? Or posters? Or anything, really, in everyday life? We constantly see advertisements for things like the food bank (rightfully so of course!)- why don’t we try to do the same for refugee conflicts? We should also make learning about the struggles to become a refugee more focused on it school. I did not even know what a refugee was until age 14, in grade nine geography class. I feel like learning about how desperate many situations actually are would create a lot more empathy and stem a greater desire to do something in many Canadian citizens.

• 

  Images showing the terrible conditions that refugees must
  live in would increase awareness and empathy.

  Another way to improve the minds of people towards refugees would be (as sad as this is) to explain how accepting refugees benefits Canadians. Our country has an aging population and the median birth rate is 1.6 children per woman. We actually need more people to come to Canada to work. Without increasing the population, the retirement age will increase dramatically, hours will go up and there will not be enough people for all of the required jobs. We can explain how accepting more refugees (as well as immigrants) will help the economy continue to be stimulated, which may help in decreasing some of the animosity and disapproval of Canadians towards refugees.
  
  

As indicated by the population pyramid, the majority of Canada's
population is middle age and will soon be retiring, leaving a
massive hold in the job sector- we need more people in Canada.

Images showing the terrible conditions that refugees must
live in would increase awareness and empathy.

4. Sponsor Refugees:

This idea involves almost like a “scholarship” of sorts for refugees to come to Canada. A person (or a group of people) could pay for someone to come to Canada under refugee status. There does actuallyexist a program through the government of Canada which allows you to financially assist refugees. “As a sponsor, you provide financial and emotional support for the refugees for the duration of the sponsorship. This includes help for housing, clothing and food.” (Government of Canada, 2014) Should you like to consider becoming a sponsor, please visit: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/refugees/sponsor/index.asp.

5. Encourage Education, Democracy, Peace, etc… In Other Nations:

As a developed nation, Canada has quite a bit of influence and could make a difference through something as simple as education. Democracy, peace, education for all and a decent standard of living and quality of life for all people in all nations must be encouraged, if not demanded, by Canadians. We should also educate others that it is their right to be involved in their government, to go to school, to have access to clean water, healthcare and sanitation, etc.. Increasing education will help people get better paying jobs and could be a very important factor in breaking their family’s cycle of poverty. We should continue to try and improve quality of life in other nations, ones with large amounts of refugee applicants. Refugees generally leave because of a low quality of life in their home country. If we help in increasing the quality of life in their nation, they will not have to endure leaving their family and home behind them and this costs less money for the Canadian government. Plus, sending teachers and staff to educate in other nations will help create jobs for Canada’s overabundance of teachers.

As all of these solutions are fairly basic, I find it again reinforced that Canada’s refugee policy is far too harsh. Because all of these solutions are fairly simple and easy to do, it shows that Canada is doing very little for refugees. All of these solutions are mainly about taking some of the financial pressure off of Canada, which is usually the main argument for why Canada accepts too many refugees. These solutions show that something as simple as finances and basic education are preventing people from obtaining their basic human rights such as democracy, health care and education. By preventing people from coming to Canada because of financial reasons demonstrates that Canada is far too harsh on incoming refugees.

In this video, Angelina Jolie asks visitors to visit the UNHCR 

website to learn more about refugees and how to help.