Housing illegal migrants cost Canada $1.1 billion since 2017
Temporary housing program for asylum seekers extended to 2027, thanks to additional $1.1 billion set aside in Budget 2024
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OTTAWA — Canada has spent over $1 billion dollars to house migrants who illegally crossed into Canada from the U.S., according to a government departmental bulletin.
That’s on top of the $1.1 billion set aside in the 2024 federal budget to extend the program housing to these so-called “irregular border crossers” in Canadian hotels until 2027.
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Canada experienced a flood of illegal border crossings in 2017, thanks to changes in U.S. immigration policy under then-U.S. President Donald Trump, and further encouraged by a January 2017 tweet from former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, ostensibly rolling out the welcome mat to migrants around the world to enter Canada by any means necessary.
Roxham Rd. a Quebec street about 50 kilometres south of Montreal that dead-ends at the Canada-U.S. border, became a focal point of this international exodus, with U.S.-based taxi and transportation companies offering dedicated routes to the illegal crossing for scores of suitcase-toting migrants.
Housing these migrants became the responsibility of dozens of Canadians cities and towns while they awaited refugee hearings.
In June 2018, former Toronto mayor John Tory said the influx of asylum seekers quickly overwhelmed city’s capacity to care for them, with many taking up valuable space in homeless shelters or living on the street.
The $1.1 billion to house these migrants was made available through the federal governments’ Interim Housing Assistance Program (IHAP,) designed to provide funding to provinces and cities.
Ontario received $640.2 million through the program, while Quebec got $440.9 million.
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While a government website listing numbers of illegal migrants was “down for maintenance” at press time, online web archives from earlier this month show 114,251 refugee claims made between Feb 2017 and March 2025.
Of those, 53,856 claims were accepted, 26,377 were rejected, 2,957 claims were abandoned, and 7,119 were withdrawn.
The IHAP program has been extended until 2027, thanks for an additional $1.1 billion set aside in Canada’s 2024 budget.
Migrants were also housed in federally-funded hotel rooms since 2020, money on top of the IHAP funding.
The City of Toronto received $40 million from Ottawa to increase their migrant capacity in the 2024-25 fiscal year, while Peel Region netted $22 million.
Around 4,500 migrants, largely in Ontario, are being housed in federally-funded accommodations, as of last October.
IHAP funding in this fiscal year amounts to around $543.4 million, as listed in the federal government’s latest supplementary estimates disclosures.
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