OTTAWA John McCallum, Canada's immigration minister, acknowledged Wednesday that his government was likely to miss its target of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the year.
During a news conference, Mr. McCallum said that he was confident that at least 10,000 refugees would be "certified" as permanent residents of Canada by next week's deadline. "The issue is whether all of those 10,000 Syrian refugees will have arrived in Canada, will have their feet on Canadian soil, by Dec. 31," he said.
Mr. McCallum said the process had been slowed by bad weather and the inability of many refugees to pack up and leave quickly. He added that the government still believed that it would be able to admit 25,000 refugees from Syria by the end of February.