Somewhere along the line, citizens and their leaders around the world are going to have to admit that the present plan for dealing with the burgeoning refugee problem isn't going to work. It's not all about the math, although that's not a bad place to start.When Filippo Grandi, head of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, spoke from the lectern at the recent refugee summit in New York he took upon himself the unenviable task of reminding those present that the current global response just wasn't ready for what is about to come. When he talked numbers, things got quiet. One in every 113 people alive today have joined the great movement leaving their cultural home because of deplorable human rights conditions and outright persecution – that's 24 people fleeing every minute of the day. Almost 65 million have crossed their historic borders to join the greatest wave of refugees of the modern era – a percentage higher than any time since records were first taken in 1951. He reminded the world that it is approaching a crisis point in history.Perhaps those present agreed with him, but that was hard to spot in the final New York Declaration delivered only a few hours later. What emerged from that document was a relatively status quo announcement, sprinkled with terms of urgency but no real plans for adequately facing the challenge. The UN had hoped to get attending nations to deliver their plans for action on the refugee file but ultimately that won't occur now until 2018.Keep in mind that we're talking primarily about persecuted refugees at this point. By the end of this century, tens of millions of climate change refugees by UN estimates will add to the overall number – a troubling portent transcending whatever response the global community agrees to just two years from now.Grandi knows the gig is up. His disappointment was palpable when in August the draft document for the New York conference ultimately deleted the promise of resettling 10 percent of the world's refugees per year. In other words, it never made it to New York. The reason? A number of UN member states opposed the idea and eventually killed it. They had seen what has happened in Germany, France, Britain, and Greece, along with the powerful anti-immigration stance of an army of Donald Trump supporters in the United States that is quickly splitting America down the middle, and they didn't want to run the risk of such political conflict in their own lands. Watching Germany's Angela Merkel suddenly apologizing to her nation for practicing such a generous refugee policy would surely have sent a shudder through the global political elite. Canada continues to be upheld as an example of global compassion on this file, but will our bonhomie hold once refugee numbers double, and then double again?The time is rapidly approaching when the problem will become so vast, so complex, so conflicting, that perhaps a new approach will have to be launched that seeks to combine levels of global compassion, justice, security, and economic development in the very areas from which present and future refugees emerge. Few wish to talk about this, of course, because the costs will be high, the public will be challenged, and a new kind of global collaboration will have to be developed, unlike anything we have at present.But there is more. Citizens around the globe will have to get behind such a comprehensive effort in ways that gives political traction to those political parties and leaders willing to take on the heavy lifting of rebuilding numerous parts of the globe.This will have to be something even more robust than the Marshall Plan that followed the Second World War and which played a significant role in the rebuilding of Europe. We forget that America's political leaders understood that a vast movement of humanity such as the world had never seen would soon be making its way to their shores. It was decided to rebuild those regions that were broken, dispossessed, and remarkably destitute, so that citizens could again build their lives around the cultures they knew and the geography they had fashioned into a home. For all its flaws, the Marshall Plan worked because it was a designed plan vast enough to include aid, physical security, economic renewal, healthcare, education, and peacekeeping. Yet it's ultimate goal was to stop the bleeding before it stained the rest of the world.We are nowhere near such an objective at present, but if Filippo Grandi's pronouncements are correct, healing the world will involve a lot more than merely accepting the tragic outcasts of humanity's greater problems. Inevitably, the world will have to come together in a complex fashion that will heal those regions of the globe so badly broken and which force out millions of shattered but resolute people as a result. It's only a matter of time and it could be a cause worthy enough of Canada's attention.Glen Pearson was a career professional firefighter and is a former Member of Parliament from southwestern Ontario.  He and his wife adopted three children from South Sudan and reside in London, Ontario.  He has been the co-director of the London Food Bank for 29 years.  He writes regularly for the London Free Press and also shares his views on a blog entitled “The Parallel Parliament“.   Follow him on twitter @GlenPearson.