This story is part of Welcome to Canada, a CBC News series about immigration told through the eyes of the people who have experienced it.
For more than a year and a half, Ismail Adam, 61, of Mississauga, Ont., has been seized with dread every time he receives a phone call.
“You just hope the phone [call] is not from Sudan,” he says, “because you don’t want to hear the news.”
News out of the country these days is generally grim. Sudan is plagued by cascading tragedies: an ongoing internal military conflict, a growing risk of famine and an epidemic of sexual assault. Edem Wosornu of the United Nations called the situation a “crisis of staggering scale and cruelty.”
Adam’s parents along with his older brother and younger sister have been caught in the crossfires of the ongoing conflict, forced to flee their home in the capital of Khartoum not long after fighting broke out between rival military groups in April 2023.
“They got raided inside their own home,” says Adam. “An armed group of people got in the house one day and demanded to be given gold and money.”
Since then they’ve been frequently on the move. They’re among more than 12 million people in Sudan displaced by the war.
Adam wants desperately to bring them to safety in Canada, as they’ve been in peril for nearly two years. Despite applying last year for a Canadian government program meant to bring citizens’ families here, he has not heard back. He fears for the worst, and feels that racism could play a part in it.
“When it comes to Sudan, it feels like they don’t care,” says Adam. “I don’t know if compassion has colour, but it seems like that to me.”
The crisis in Sudan is increasingly dire
Tens of thousands of people have already died in Sudan due to the conflict. According to the United Nations, half of Sudan’s population — nearly 25 million people — are “experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity.”
In February 2024, the Canadian government launched a family-based pathway program meant to bring in families of Canadian citizens or permanent residents from Sudan. Applications were capped at 3,250, which was reached by early May.
Adam applied the first day he could, but says he hasn’t received a response.
His experience is far from unique. According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, nearly 11 months after the pathway program was launched, only 340 people have been approved to come to Canada.
Nagwa El Mamoun, an immigration consultant in Oakville, Ont., says she was initially very pleased with the program’s promise.
“Canada is one of the countries that stepped in with a special humanitarian program for the Sudanese people,” she says. “It’s a really good step, but unfortunately, we expected more.”
What she and others in the Sudanese community expected, she says, was a sense of urgency on behalf of Canadian immigration officials commensurate with the dire situation, much as officials showed for people in other countries at times of crisis.
She points to Canada’s response to the civil war in Syria, where Canada took in 25,000 people in 100 days between 2015 to 2016. In the following years, more than 100,000 Syrians have come to Canada. By comparison, since the war broke out in April 2023, only 2,890 Sudanese refugees have come to Canada through various programs.
“What is the difference between the Syrians and the Sudanese?”
Canada has welcomed large numbers of refugees in the past
The war in Syria isn’t the only instance where Canada expedited the immigration process during a time of need abroad. After the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021, more than 40,000 Afghan refugees came to Canada. And in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine starting in 2022, 300,000 Ukrainians were welcomed in Canada.
El Mamoun has helped hundreds of Sudanese Canadians navigate the immigration process to bring their families to Canada. Most of those people have become disenchanted with the process, believing it to be inequitable: “They say it’s not fair.”
The apparent double standard raises troubling questions for Khalid Medani, director of the Institute of Islamic Studies and chair of the African studies program at McGill University in Montreal.
“The humanitarian crisis — which, in Sudan, is far greater than Ukraine has ever been and will be — why does it take months and months with no result, where in the case of Ukraine, two weeks?”
Medani points not only to the delays in bringing family members from Sudan to Canada but suggests the small number of applications allowed is problematic.
“The cap right now is so ridiculously low,” says Medani. “This is not … an ask that is requesting that Sudanese come en masse to Canada.
Khalid Medani is a professor and chair of the African Studies program at McGill University. He details the scale of destruction in the conflict in Sudan.
“It’s supposed to be an expedited program.”
Medani can see only one possible reason for such a small number of refugees accepted to come to Canada: “It’s clear there is a racial bias against African refugees.”
In response, IRCC told CBC News it is “committed to a fair and non-discriminatory application of immigration procedures.”
“As part of our commitment to anti-racism, equity and inclusion, we are looking closely at Canada’s immigration system to help ensure our programs and policies are fair, equitable and culturally sensitive.”
An urgent call for action
In the meantime, Adam worries for the health and safety of his family, especially for his elderly parents, who have fallen sick several times. Most recently his mother contracted malaria, but there was nowhere for her to seek medical attention, as few hospitals in the country are functioning.
“They might die with a bullet, or they might die of diseases or they might die of famine.”
And with seemingly few options, he is imploring the federal government to bring his family members and others like his to Canada immediately.
“My patience is thinning, it’s really thinning.”