Hossam Elsharkawi and Canadian Red Cross

temporary housing: Those refugees formed the majority of the first wave of resettlement, according to CTV. But with arrivals set to spool up in the remaining seven weeks of the program, especially those of government-assisted refugees, finding enough temporary housing has become an urgent issue. Three military bases in Ontario and Quebec should be ready by the end of next week to provide essential services for government-assisted refugees, said Hossam Elsharkawi, associate vice president, international operations for the Canadian Red Cross. "We are not able at this stage to quite understand how many weeks they will stay at these centres, but at least these centres will have the capacity of three to four thousand refugees," he said, "If we need to grow that to larger, we will." So far, the bases haven't had to be used in part because privately sponsored refugees -- representing about 10,000 of the 25,000 Syrians the Liberals say they will bring to Canada by the end of February -- have groups arranging housing. Over the course of a normal year, Canada takes in about 7,000 government-assisted refugees, sent to one of the 36 cities with agreements in place to provide support services paid for by the federal government. Government-assisted refugees often arrive in clusters, but having 15,000 of them coming in the space of three months is overwhelming. In many of these cities, organizations run residences that can handle a few hundred people at most for a few weeks while they search for more permanent housing. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.