Toronto Pearson airport to re-open terminal for Syrian refugees

Toronto Pearson International Airport is re-opening its rarely used Infield terminal to process Syrian refugees that will arrive at the airport next week.

The first planeloads of refugees will arrive in Toronto next Thursday according to a federal solicitation document posted on Monday. The document says that the flights will continue till the end of March.

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The federal government plans on bringing 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of February, with 10,000 of them arriving in Toronto and Montreal by the end of this month.

In Toronto, Pearson airport is prepping the currently closed Infield terminal to deal specifically with welcoming and processing Syrian refugees.

The terminal is located between the two major runways and was initially built to handle overflow traffic during the construction of the current Terminal 1 in the early 2000s. Since the terminal shut down, it has frequently been used as a film location for movies and TV shows.

The first group will be made up largely of privately sponsored refugees, many of whose files have been in the works for months as churches and other community groups moved to assist some of the most vulnerable people fleeing the Syrian civil war.

The plan is bring those refugees into Canada on commercial flights, with military airplanes available every 48 hours if necessary in case commercial jets aren't available.

More than 500 officials have been assigned to work on the massive resettlement program, one of the largest of its kind in the world as it relates to the Syrian refugee crisis.

Since the outbreak of the war there in 2011, the UN estimates some 4.2 million people have been displaced.