Double Number

: The government will also put more diplomats on the ground overseas to screen refugees, more than double the number of staff working to process sponsorship applications here in Canada, and appoint a special co-ordinator to handle the overall file of Syrian and Iraqi refugees. "Security screening will remain the top priority," Chris Alexander, the minister of citizenship and immigration, said Saturday at news conference in the east Toronto riding where he campaigning for re-election on Oct. 19, according to Hamilton Spectator. Alexander stressed that the government is "accelerating our existing commitment" to refugee resettlement, not increasing the actual target numbers. Syrians fleeing the civil war and sectarian conflict will no longer have to prove they are convention refugees under the United Nations Refugee Agency, but will be presumed to be refugees by Canadian authorities for the purposes of vetting their applications. But the new measures, which are expected to cost $25 million over two years, could speed up the movement of some 10,000 Syrian refugees to Canada from the current three-year timetable by about 15 months, he said. The humanitarian crisis spreading from Syria into Europe has sideswiped the election campaign and put Harper Conservative government on the defensive ever since it emerged that the extended family of a drowned Syrian toddler aspired to come to Canada. A campaigning Prime Minister Stephen Harper has also proposed to bring in an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees if re-elected. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.