Afghanistan Committee on April 25th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

You're welcome.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

You must have been surprised to see me for some reason.

Minister, it's good to have you here. I'm going to use my time judiciously.

Section 25.1 of the act allows you to make direct ministerial interventions on humanitarian grounds. How many of those have you, or your delegate in the department, issued with respect to the Afghan refugee situation?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I'll have to follow up with you to determine the specific answer to that question.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Can you undertake to provide that to this special committee?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I think I can provide you with that answer.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Yes, please provide the number.

Up until August 31—several weeks after the fall of Kabul—the United States and some allies rescued approximately 120,000 refugees. At the tail end of August, Canada was in an election under the caretaker convention. How many ministerial exemptions were provided during that time—August 15 to the end of August—to help facilitate the rescue of people? I understand you weren't the minister, but do you know how many were issued?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I would ask the officials who are here with us, in case they have that information. I don't have that information with me today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Does Ms. Tapley want to respond, or anyone else?

[Catrina Tapley, Deputy Minister, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. We will have to get back to you with a precise number.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

If you could table with the committee the specific number of exemptions given during that time period in August, and perhaps in the five months ahead of time.... To my colleague Mr. Hallan's point, for months before the fall of Kabul, veteran organizations and many NGOs were demanding swifter action while it was possible for us to use our assets—C-17s and other aircraft—to get people out.

You were not the minister at the time. Was there any initiative under way that you were told about, as part of your briefing as a new minister, regarding how many we were able to get out in the previous six months?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Is this in the six months prior to my appointment to this position?

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

This is in the six months prior to the fall of Kabul.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

The information I have is just in advance of the fall of Kabul. I believe we're dealing with about 3,700 people who were evacuated from the area around that time and who were resettled in Canada.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Ms. Kwan mentioned a single travel document that would help facilitate people getting out of Afghanistan or the larger region. Is your department currently working on such a document—the number one request of many refugees and their families?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

We can issue single journey travel documents after a person completes that process and is eligible and approved to come to Canada. We can do that, but we don't have plans to start issuing travel documents before a person has completed the process of becoming approved.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Do they have to give documentation to secure that document?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Yes. They would need to also complete the biometrics process before they can be approved to come to Canada. We're not using it to shortcut the process to get people here without having gone through the approval process.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

You said in your remarks that you plan not to waver from our commitment to the people who are at risk due to serving Canada.

When do you anticipate—what timeline from now going forward—completing this evacuation? Is it months? Is there a timeline that your department is using?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

We anticipate that we will be able to complete this next year. That was the commitment I made publicly. The precise date will depend on our ability to secure safe passage for the people we have made a commitment to who are still in Afghanistan. We pursue a number of different strategies with different partners to make that happen, but that is one that I can't, with a straight face, tell you there is a certain date when the 40,000th person is going to arrive, because we have to deal with facts that remain uncertain and challenges that remain unsolved.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Is there a date for the people who are located outside of Afghanistan? I gave you a document related to the family of a constituent who is in Tajikistan.

Is there a shorter time frame for people we know are outside of Afghanistan that their families can expect them to return home?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

It will depend on the individual case and where a particular person is. I want to careful not to speak to an individual case, because I don't want to create an expectation when I don't have the facts, and obviously there would be privacy concerns.

For the most part, we are seeing right now that there is a pretty good ability for us to move people who are in a third country and have been approved. We're seeing a pace of arrivals in excess of about a thousand a month right now, with a new large plane arriving on a weekly basis and sometimes more frequently. If you were to follow that logic, you would find yourself sometime into next year—not too deep into the year.

I'm not as worried about making good on our commitment to those people who are already outside of Afghanistan. I'm not worried about us wavering on our commitment to those in Afghanistan. There is less certainty around the specific date of the arrivals for the people who are in Afghanistan.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Mr. O'Toole. Your time is up. I appreciate the tone that you have set for the committee. All the very best.

Now we will move to Mr. Baker for five minutes.

Please go ahead.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

Minister, thank you for being with us today.

I want to start by recapping some of what I've heard.

I think it's fair to say that all of us here at this committee, and you, Minister, want to make sure that we bring as many refugees as we can from Afghanistan to Canada as soon as possible. The government set a commitment to bring in 40,000 refugees by the end of 2023. There are 11,500 who have arrived. There are 10,000 more, if I understand you correctly, Minister, who have been approved but are in Afghanistan and need to get out of the country to be able to come to Canada. That is a total of 21,500 who have either come to Canada or have been approved and are still in Afghanistan and need to find their way out. To reach our target of 40,000, that leaves a balance of about 18,500.

We've heard that there are millions of Afghan refugees who have fled Afghanistan. Can you explain why we've not been able to meet the target of 40,000 as yet?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Sure. There are a couple of different factors at play. There are a couple of different things that you have to understand. You left out a key group, as well, of people who are already in a third country who have been approved. We also started this Parliament, at the point when I was appointed, where we had initially a commitment we'd made before the last federal election to resettle 20,000 Afghan refugees. We've had to formally increase that commitment beyond the campaign commitment. We've actually implemented and approved additional spaces.

One thing that's really important for people to appreciate is that, when you look at the process, it's a bit different for government-assisted refugees compared with privately sponsored refugees, and it's a little different for the humanitarian cases as compared with the special immigration measures for the people who made a contribution to Canada's mission. One thing they have in common is that I don't sit in my office in Ottawa and say, “There's a group of people right there. Let's fill up the spaces we have available.” We use referral partners for a reason.

On the special immigration measures for people who made a contribution to Canada, we want DND and GAC, which are placed most closely to the people who worked for them, to be able to identify who amongst the people who've applied can qualify for our programs. Similarly when we deal with a private sponsorship group or government-assisted refugees but we have a referral partner, we leave it to those groups to identify the individuals who will be subscribed to a program, typically on the basis of their vulnerability. When we're dealing with spaces we've granted to the UNHCR, for example, and they're ramping up operations in a region, they don't necessarily have the ability to deal with 10,000 people who've already been approved and are waiting for a country to take them. In the case of a traditional refugee resettlement effort, it might look something a little more like that, but when we're responding to a crisis in real time it makes it really challenging.

I made the point earlier that if we just wanted to pick any 40,000 Afghan refugees it would be much easier, because to your point, there have been people who've fled Afghanistan in large numbers for a very long time. We wanted to make sure that we didn't waver on our commitment to help those who've helped us. We've made commitments to the family members of interpreters who were resettled here previously. When we're making a commitment to people who are still in the country, it changes the landscape to a significant degree, but it's important that we continue to work with our referral partners to fill out these programs, which I expect will be done actually quite quickly.