A few weeks ago, I wrote a column on conditions at a Radisson Hotel in Scarborough that is housing refugees.
I quoted a number of online posts from TripAdvisor from people claiming to have been guests at the hotel and who variously described it as an “absolute zoo,” a “madhouse,” “dangerous,” dirty, noisy and full of loitering refugees.
One post I quoted was by a guest who claimed Toronto Animal Services needed to be called to the hotel because “some goats were being slaughtered” in public bathrooms.
Those columns provoked online outrage, particularly from progressive shills determined to conflate reporting on what amounts to the abandonment of refugees we’ve accepted into our country with racism and anti-Islamic sentiment.
This is par for the course for the hectoring, far left ideologues who live in the toxic and hysterical Twitterverse, and the far left echo-chamber digital media outlets who fuel the mob’s half-baked conspiracy theories.
The majority of online outrage asserted the TripAdvisor posts on conditions at the hotel were false, fake, invented and then more disturbingly, linked the column I wrote directly to what appeared to be a subsequent attempted arson at the hotel.
To set the record straight, here’s what was actually reported and what I’ve subsequently found.
Before I wrote the Oct. 3 column, I contacted the Radisson about the negative posts. The hotel refused to confirm or deny general allegations about conditions at the hotel, the specific claim about goats being slaughtered or even to confirm or deny refugees were at the hotel.
In a follow-up piece, I contacted the city for comment and spokesman Natasha Hinds-Fitzsimmons also declined to address the allegations, saying: “To respect the privacy of the individuals, we are not naming the specific hotels.”
Let’s address both allegations, first that guests found the hotel chaotic.
One TripAdvisor post among those broadly dismissed as fake or untrue was written by an Ottawa woman using the name CanadianSHE. She insists conditions at the hotel did reflect what others had written and that her comments were anything but fake.
Nor were they inspired by anti-refugee sentiment. It turns out CanadianSHE has personally sponsored four refugee families.
Her stay at the Radisson, she suggested, “gave her a sense of what it was like” to be living in a refugee camp in Turkey, as one of her sponsored families had done.
“I will never choose Radisson based on this experience,” CanadianSHE told me in a recent interview, also noting her post was pulled by TripAdvisor after the hotel complained she was commenting about “irrelevant things.”
CanadianSHE’s issue wasn’t with the refugees themselves, and neither is mine. It’s the conditions our government is housing them in.
Of course, she was frustrated with the hotel.
The woman, who asked that I not use her real name because she doesn’t want to become a target of online hatred, told me this past week that the Radisson was indeed full of refugees when she stayed there in June while in Toronto for a family wedding–and she was not apprised of that beforehand.
Suggestions made in other posts that the hotel seemed more like a badly run refugee camp than a hotel were accurate, she insisted.
CanadianSHE said there were “almost constant” throngs of people milling about in the lobby and it was certainly noisy and chaotic.
One time during her two-day stay, she was in an elevator which opened to a toddler standing there “with no one else around,” she said.
According to Shelter Support and Housing spokesman Pat Anderson, 577 refugees have been staying at the Radisson in 146 rooms for the past several months, which certainly seems unacceptably crowded for people forced to live interminably in a hotel.
I contacted a number of TripAdvisor posters who complained about conditions at the hotel but unless posters check their accounts they don’t get those messages, and I’ve received no replies.
Meanwhile, the focal point of online outrage over my coverage has been largely on the “goat” post, not only suggesting it was fake but broadly and objectionably characterizing the claims as bigoted, racist and intended to foment hate toward refugees.
Turns out, given CanadianSHE’s experience, the latter suggestion is largely true.
And adverse reviews continue to grow on TripAdvisor.
There’s a difference between unconfirmed and fake posts or claims, and a difference between wrong and fake information in stories.
However, the post I quoted where a guest claimed animal services needed to be called to the hotel because “some goats were being slaughtered” in public bathrooms appears false based on follow-up with animal services and city officials.
On that score, I got it wrong and am happy to set the record straight.
Last week I contacted COSTI spokesman, Mario Calla, whose agency is being paid by the city to help settle the refugees.
It took several days for Calla to responded by e-mail following repeated efforts to talk with him about conditions at the hotel.
Asked how he knows that the reviews on TripAdvisor are fake, Calla said: “It’s fair for people to debate immigration policy but it’s not acceptable to misrepresent and to be malicious.”
Pressed further, Calla insisted there has been “serious misrepresentation of the refugee claimants and the hotel” and “anyone walking into the hotel will know it does not resemble a refugee camp.”
So the objection seems to be over how one describes chaos, whether they are sensitive or politically correct enough.
They don’t care about the conditions those who come to our country looking for refuge are forced to endure.
They don’t care about the cost to taxpayers.
They’ve made no complaint about the fact the refugees are living in cramped conditions in a hotel stuck in an industrial park.
They don’t care that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau threw open the doors of the country to desperate people and then basically abandoned them.
They are happy to use refugees as political pawns, to shout racism and bigotry at any criticism because that furthers their divisive political ideology or their ability to fill their pockets by wringing grants out of government.
It’s a point I summed up in an Oct. 14 tweet, responding to Twitter trolls on this issue: “So Trudeau’s sycophant is just fine with the warehousing of illegal immigrants in hotels, dorms and emergency shelters at Toronto taxpayer expense it seems.”
The efforts to silence me by characterizing what I wrote as “racist,” or suggest I’m an “Islamophobe” are contemptible and offensive.
As are contemptible suggestions linking my column to what appears to be an attempted arson or running pictures of me alongside the alleged arsonist, claiming both are one and the same.
The police have said they have no evidence linking a gas can that was on fire in a hotel hallway with the refugees staying there.
They may make that determination in time, or dismiss it, but the lack of fact, evidence or information didn’t stop the twitter mob from making a categorical link between the column and the fire.
Of course they didn’t implicate their own tweets or coverage.
I not only did due diligence on the Radisson stories but I’ve been advocating for the underdog — the homeless, social housing tenants, the socially isolated, seniors and anyone else without a voice — for most of my entire 30-year career.
More importantly than anything I fear that the refugees have just been dumped in the hotel, left to bide their time as federal government officials scramble to find them permanent housing, without proper outreach or ongoing attempts to connect them to services that will help them integrate them into the community.
That’s the point we should all be most concerned about.
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