The lunchtime chatter among a small group of employees in the crowded breakroom of a large corporate office in Markham, Ont., is increasingly edged with anxiety.
After fleeing the war in Ukraine last year, Stella Vitiuk and Nataliia Vabiak got a jobs as accountants at a business that hired a handful of Ukrainian newcomers.
As their colleagues talk about weekend plans, Vitiuk and Vabiak swap notes on their efforts to stay in Canada. Each day brings their emergency visas closer to expiry, with no end in sight to the war that brought them here.
"I am a strong person, but I feel stressed," said Vitiuk. "It's painful for everybody."
She made the difficult decision to leave her husband and parents and bring her two daughters to Canada in the summer of 2022 and said she wants to stay for her kids' sake.
"I want to give them something new, something good."
As of Oct. 14, more than 198,600 Ukrainians have come to Canada on a three-year emergency visa program that allowed an unlimited number of people to flee the Russian invasion.
It is a one-of-a-kind program that allowed many Ukrainians to come to Canada quickly, but doesn't offer the same long-term prospects and supports of a refugee program or a permanent immigration stream.
Many are women and children because men of fighting age are barred from leaving Ukraine while the country is under martial law. (more...)
Ukrainians fleeing war say there are barriers to starting new life in Canada
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