New Brunswick sends $50K to help UN with Syrian refugee relief

The New Brunswick government will send $50,000 to the United Nations to help Syrian refugees, Premier Brian Gallant announced on Friday.

• New Brunswick churches helping sponsor Syrian families

The premier announced the financial assistance on Friday, joining other provinces, such as Ontario, Manitoba and Nova Scotia, that have also sent funds to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to support the Syrian refugee relief effort.

Gallant said the province is also open to welcoming refugees from the war-torn country.

"We made it very clear that we are open, we want to work with our federal counterparts, we want to ensure that we do what we can as a province and as a country to help the people of Syria in the humanitarian crisis," Gallant told reporters.

"We will work with the federal government to see what role we should be playing but we want to make it clear that our doors are open. We want to do whatever we can to help our community and to help people who are certainly in a very terrible situation."

Gallant said he did not know how many Syrian refugees have settled in New Brunswick since the crisis started.