Montreal’s Welcome Hall Mission housing asylum seekers amid claims surge at Lacolle border

Welcome Hall Mission’s Pavillon Macaulay, an emergency shelter in Montreal, has been housing about 25 asylum seekers each night.

These services are being offered amidst a recent surge in asylum seekers crossing the St-Bernard-de-Lacolle border into Quebec, many of them of believed to be of Haitian origin, who are looking to flee the U.S. as their temporary status is set to expire in the coming weeks and months. 

“This is the first stop in many cases for somebody who can’t find something as soon as they arrive in the city of Montreal,” explained Sam Watts, CEO and executive director of Welcome Hall Mission, while giving CityNews a tour of a room where asylum seekers sleep in the shelter, adding, “it’s bunk beds, it’s not something that I would call ideal accommodation, but it’s four walls and a roof.”

“It’s a space where we can welcome people, make sure that they’re fed, make sure that they understand what it is they need. We’ll try and connect them to other services or to housing that they can be in permanently.” 

Watts added that many of the asylum seekers who arrive at Pavillon Macaulay come from middle class families in their countries of origin. 

“Certainly we do see a preponderance of people from Haiti, also from North Africa, and as well the various South and Central American countries,” said Watts.

“They’re human beings, so we want to welcome people, to help them,” said Alexandre Côté, the team lead at Pavillon Macaulay working for Welcome Hall Mission. “Every day, we find people that come here, even a woman with a baby recently came with other people.”

While this emergency shelter welcomes many single men and families, there are still some asylum seekers that remain homeless without shelter. 

“We know that there are some that we’ll find in encampments, and right now we’ve got a program that we’re doing, we’re just starting on, to help house people who are stuck in encampments and can’t seem to move out of it,” revealed Watts.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) documented 1,356 asylum claims at the St-Bernard-de-Lacolle border crossing in March, and between April 1 and 6, they received 557.

However, the number of asylum seekers entering Quebec has been on a slight decline in recent months with 2,930 claims filed in February as opposed to 3,075 in January according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada data.

CBSA data also reveals that in Quebec they have processed 5,246 asylum claims from the beginning of this year until April 6. During the same period last year, they processed 11,118 asylum applications in the province which translates to a reduction of approximately 53 per cent for this year during that period.

Despite these trends, Watts is anticipating that there could be an increase in asylum seekers from the U.S. in the not too distant future. 

“What we’re also doing is preparing for the possibility that there will be a greater surge than what we’re seeing now. We remember very well what happened in 2017, and so we’re getting ourselves prepared for a variety of possibilities,” said Watts.