As Canada is getting ready to receive the first charter flight of the 25,000 Syrian refugees it has pledged to resettle by the end of February, Canadian daily the Toronto Star has chosen to greet them with a warm “Welcome to Canada” — subtitled in Arabic — on the front page of its Thursday edition.
To welcome the first arrival of migrants, Toronto’s Pearson Airport has been “turned into a one-stop immigration shop, complete with posters of Niagara Falls, a play room with moose plush toys and warm winter clothing,” the Star reports.
“They will enter this terminal as refugees and leave as permanent residents of Canada,” the daily quotes Heidi Jurisic, of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, as saying.
Canada’s new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned in favor of resettling 25,000 people displaced by the civil war in Syria — a plan that was criticized by his political opponents after the Nov. 13 terror attacks in Paris.