TORONTO - The uncle of the three-year-old Syrian boy whose lifeless body has put a devastating human face on the Syrian refugee crisis has assailed Canada's refugee process.

Rocco Logozzo tells The Canadian Press that the system is designed to fail. He adds his family had money and plenty of room to house little Aylan Kurdi and his brother and parents at his home in Coquitlam, B.C.

Instead, the family says Canada rejected their refugee application in June.

The family then lost all hope, Logozzo says, and made the ``bad'' choice to get on a boat to try to get to Europe.

Logozzo says he and wife, Teema Kurdi, have been grieving since hearing the news that their nephews, Aylan and his five-year-old brother, Galip, and their mother, Rehand, died as they tried to reach Europe from Syria.

Logozzo says the boys' father, Abdullah, who is Teema Kurdi's brother, survived after their speed boat capsized when it was struck by a large wave as they traveled from Turkey to a Greek island.

He says Abdullah told his sister that he put lifejackets on both boys, but they somehow slipped off when the boat flipped over.

Teema Kurdi was too hearbroken to talk at length today, saying through sobs that she was not feeling well enough to talk.