Five things to know about Canada and refugees over the last half-century

OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been in New York this week to address the United Nations, where much of the buzz has been about Canada’s intake of Syrian refugees.

Here are five things to know about the history of the country’s refugee system:

1. Between 1946 and 1962, Canada admitted nearly a quarter of a million refugees who were sponsored by relatives, by government and church groups or under contract labour schemes. The Canadian Council for Refugees says selection criteria were guided by considerations of economic self-interest, racial prejudice and political bias.

2. In 1956-57, the aftermath of a failed revolution led to more than 200,000 people fleeing Hungary. Canada had not signed international agreements on refugees, but in response to public pressure, the government implemented a special program that admitted more than 37,000 Hungarian refugees in less than a year.

3. Canada tabled a new Immigration Act in 1976 which, for the first time, recognized refugees as a special class of immigrants. It entrenched the definition of a convention refugee, created a refugee determination system, provided for admission on humanitarian grounds of designated classes of people and enabled the private sponsorship of refugees. Since 1979, the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program has allowed Canadians to offer new homes to more than 275,000 refugees.

4. By mid-1979, the plight of Southeast Asian boat people had become a crisis, with nearly 1.5 million refugees fleeing their homes. In June, the Canadian government announced that 50,000 of these refugees would be resettled by the end of 1980. For the years 1978-81, refugees made up a quarter of all immigrants to Canada.

5. By 2015, the Syrian civil war had produced a surge of millions of refugees and their plight had become a Canadian election issue. The Conservatives proposed to admit 10,000 Syrians, while the Trudeau Liberals pledged to bring in 25,000 by the end of the year. They fell short of that goal, but made it up in early 2016.