The Mayor of Niagara Falls is worried about the increasing number of migrants being sent to the city.
Jim Diodati is calling on the federal government to come up with a plan and provide resources for the thousands of migrants staying in the city’s tourist district after entering Canada through an unofficial border crossing in Quebec.
Diodati says the number of migrants coming to Niagara Falls has been steadily increasing to around 3,000 since the summer because Ottawa has been relocating the migrants and booking more motel and hotel rooms.
He says it started out as 87 rooms and now they seeing numbers in the thousands.
He says that puts a significant strain on the city's systems, especially with the city all ready in a housing crisis.
Quebec has been pushing Ottawa to do something about the imbalance of migrants arriving in that province who then go on to await a refugee claim.
Quebec has repeatedly called for the federal government to close the unofficial border crossing at Roxham Road, where nearly 40,000 thousand asylum seekers entered Canada last year.
Niagara YMCA's Deanna D'Elia says her organization started to see an increase in demand from asylum seekers about seven months ago.
(With files from CTV News Toronto, and the Canadian Press)