Banned by the Quebec government, churches and faith communities who sponsor refugees want to face their accusers and get some sort of explanation for Quebec’s sudden one-year suspension of refugee sponsorship.

Ottawa’s plan to take in a record 1.2 million immigrants between now and 2023, just under 15 per cent of them refugees, faces some serious COVID-era challenges, according to the churches and other organizations who sponsor over 20,000 refugees per year.

Most charitable gifts are spent. The money is spent responsibly and carefully and there’s never enough of it, but the money gets spent. That’s why there’s always another letter, another appeal, another campaign.

The federal government’s decision to appeal a court ruling that puts an international refugee agreement with the United States at risk is disappointing but not surprising to refugee advocacy and church groups that have long sought to have the Safe Third Country Agreement scuttled.

Refugee advocates are applauding a Federal Court ruling that Canada’s Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by sending refugees who arrive at Canadian land borders back to detention in the United States.

COVID-19 has almost completely choked off the flow of refugees to Canada, which has refugee sponsors worried about the backlog building up as they wait for travel restrictions to ease so they can start again helping new arrivals ease into jobs, apartments and communities.

As someone whose life was disrupted at an early age by the ravages of war, Fr. Sami Helewa, SJ, understands the plight of the refugee who has escaped their homeland to call elsewhere home.

MONTREAL -- Unlikely as it might seem, the Irish are once again in the eye of a controversy storm, this time over the naming of a Montreal commuter rail station in historic Griffintown neighbourhood.

OTTAWA -- Canadian churches and refugee advocates want a federal court to declare an agreement with the United States null and void, saying it is putting refugees seeking asylum in Canada at risk because the U.S. is not a safe country for them.

Federal funding that will reverse Ontario government cuts to legal aid for asylum seekers is getting praise from Catholic refugee advocates.

EDMONTON -- Having survived the Fort McMurray wildfire, they feel solidarity with displaced persons.

OTTAWA -- Canadians should not get too smug about becoming No. 1 in the world for resettling refugees, says the head of the Canadian Council for Refugees.

The Canadian Council of Churches, Amnesty International and Canadian Council for Refugees are one step closer to arguing in court that Canada’s Safe Third Country agreement with the United States is illegal.

The new president of the Canadian Council of Refugees knows what it’s like to be a refugee in Canada, because she’s living it right now.