 Welcome back. The government has just over 23 days to bring in over 10,000 Syrian refugees, at least in order to meet its revised resettlement targets. So is Canada on track to resettle that number of refugees by the end of February? Another 15,000 potentially by March. The group that helps Canada process these refugees and bring them here is the International Organization for Migration. So what do they make of Canada's commitment and what obstacles still remain? Joining me now, the Director General of the International Organization for Migration, William Lacy Swing. Nice to meet you, Mr. Swing. Appreciate you being here. You met with our immigration minister, John McCallum, today. What did you discuss in specifics or broad terms? Well, we discussed primarily Syria, obviously, the Syrian refugees, the 25,000, and the good collaboration that we have. And let me just say at the outset, it's an honor to be back in Canada. It's particularly an honor to be here at a time when I think your Prime Minister and your government have made a very courageous political decision to bring in these 25,000 refugees. I hope it's an example that will be emulated by many others because there's a lot of suffering out there. But we discussed primarily the whole question, the logistics of making this happen. We move about 300,000 people a year in normal times. And this is a bit of a challenge because, but it will make it work. I'm satisfied we can make it work. We're moving twice as many refugees in three months as we normally move in one year for Canada. We've been doing this program for many years, including cultural orientation and all of that. But right now we have surged staff into Beirut, Amman, and Ankara. We have put hundreds of staff in that we didn't have there before to make this happen. We're processing the people. We're doing the medical exams. We're getting them on planes. We're making sure they're taken care of. And then we'll help on this side also. It does seem as though it is taking some time from our perspective, watching it here. We are expecting some planes to arrive in the coming days over the next two days. How complicated is it to go through that processing on the ground? Why is it taking a little bit of time? Well, it's always a complicated process because, first of all, the UNHCR, the High Commissioner for Refugees, has to make available to us the names of the people. They have to be interviewed. They have to go through security check. They have to go through medical exams, processed and ready to go. But once this pipeline starts, we'll have our flights probably coming, our charter flights, I would hope, as early as next week or certainly in the very near future. And then they'll be coming on a regular basis and we'll see that the numbers will quickly augment. Right now, for example, we're processing about 700 a day in Jordan. This is just to come to Canada? Just in the Syria program, just for Canada, about 300 in Lebanon. And the center in Turkey will probably start in the next few days. So we're ready for business now. So Turkey has been more complicated because of the exit visas, if I understand correctly. Is that fair to say that it's been a little more challenging? No, it's basically because we have not done that much resettlement out of Turkey. Jordan is our largest resettlement post in the world. Lebanon has been building up. But Ankara is a little bit smaller. It'll take time. But right now, there are no major obstacles to a fairly smooth operation. How many people do you think Canada can really get here? Let's say by the end of the year. Let's start with that goal. Well, we're working with the government's goal 10,000 by the end of the month. And that happened. We're going to make it happen. If we can, we're going to try. I mean, I can't guarantee anything, but certainly the relationship is so good. We're working very close with the Canadian colleagues in those three posts. They've surged also staff into there. And the relationship is excellent. We have all the expertise we need, including translators, interpreters and others. So I think that we will do everything that is humanly possible to get the 10,000 by the end of the month. In any case, we're looking for the 25,000 by the end of February. Is it a problem? And we have heard this that people want out, but not everybody wants to come this far. Is that a challenge when you're trying to resettle people in terms of getting refugees to come all the way over to Canada? Or are you seeing that people are buying into that idea? No, I think people are buying into it. But I think it's normal that people would have second thoughts about whether they're leaving or they're coming back. Can they still get back into Syria? People are under, I think, a lot of frustration there. But in the end, I think we'll have no problem getting the 25,000 numbers there. And we hope that by this example of Canada and your Prime Minister, that others will follow suit because we really need to help a lot of people. Well, you called off the top, you called this a courageous political decision. What did you mean by that? Well, in the sense that there's a lot. We're living in a period of unprecedented anti-migrant sentiment in the world. You hear the rhetoric all the time, the xenophobia, the thinking they may be coming with ill intent. And we have to work against that. So to take a decision by saying we'll take 25,000 when a lot of the world is saying we don't want any more refugees or migrants, I think is courageous and visionary. Visionary. When you hear someone like Donald Trump then, for instance, say that he wants to ban all Muslims from coming into the United States, how does that affect a project like yours? How does that affect resettlement of refugees? Well, it doesn't affect us at all in terms of our ability to do the job, but it worsens the atmosphere. It puts migrants in unnecessary difficulty and potential danger and risk that should not be there. We should not be discriminating against anyone on the basis of race or creed. So we have to work to fight against the anti-migrant sentiment. Your organization will be 65 years old next year. How does this give us a sense of how what we're witnessing now compares to what we've seen in the past in terms of scale? Well, let's first of all, our organization along with the UN High Commission for Refugees were founded in 1951 precisely to take European refugees out of the ravages of World War II to Canada, to the US, to Australia and other countries like that. But we, for example, in March of 2011, working together with our other partners, we evacuated and sent home to 54 countries, 250,000 refugees that had cost about $125 million. So we've been in similar situations. The timetable is the big challenge here, but it is a timetable that we think we can hold to. Okay. Nice to meet you, Mr. Swing. I appreciate your perspective tonight. Thank you very much.