Afghanistan Committee on April 25th, 2022

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Minister, I'm going to take us back to the really difficult situation people are facing in Afghanistan right now. There are challenges that people are having, trying to get out of the country. We know that women and girls are unable to travel without a male escort.

Minister, what are some of the innovative things that you're doing at your department to try to get these really vulnerable people out of the country?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

You'd think after seven years of learning that we would know how to work these things.

Thank you for the question. The challenges are extraordinary, and we've been over that. One of the things that I think is really important is.... We sometimes lose the human stories behind some of these cases, when we talk about the numbers and the process. The treatment of women and girls by the Taliban is horrific.

I'll give you an honourable mention here, Ms. Damoff, for your work on the status of women committee during our first two and a half years here together. You've been a stalwart champion for women and girls since the moment that we've ever met.

There's one particular instance that has stuck with me that I just can't shake. There was a young 10-year old girl who was on her way, trying to come to Canada, and who had already been through a huge part of the process. She was killed at a checkpoint by the Taliban. We don't know with certainty whether that particular person was targeted. This is the same group who is now even removing Canadian citizens from an airplane because they were travelling alone.

If there's one comfort I take from our presence in Afghanistan, it's that there's an entire generation of girls who benefited from an education and whose lives will hopefully be changed.

Some of the things that we're doing in particular on this mission to help women and girls.... I'm sorry. I'm distracted in my own mind over that case. If you look at the eligibility criteria for the humanitarian stream, there's a huge focus on supporting those who are vulnerable because they're women. Sometimes it's just the fact that they were women leaders. Sometimes it's the fact that they were women leaders who were changing the society in a way that wasn't convenient for Taliban operatives. It's no coincidence that we were targeting women parliamentarians and judges. It's not because we like parliamentarians and judges as much as we might. It's because they were adopting laws that were promoting gender equality, or as judges, putting people in jail who violated principles that we believe in.

We also work with organizations that have an expertise in identifying people based on either vulnerability or the criteria we set out, including somebody's work as a human rights defender. Canada was the first country in the world to establish such a stream, and it's something we collectively can be proud of by trying to work with groups on the ground who can identify people on the basis of their vulnerability, including people who are vulnerable because they're women.

I think it's a strength of this particular program, but I'll rest a lot easier when I see that we've achieved our goal to get more of those women here to Canada.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Minister, I just have over a minute left. Could you speak about the importance of having government-sponsored refugees come to Canada, and how has that changed since we were elected in 2015?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you for this. Although I don't necessarily take it this way, there was a comment made a moment ago about it being less of a burden on taxpayers when we're dealing with privately sponsored versus government-assisted refugees. I think it's really important that we are all careful in our language. Refugees are not a burden on our communities. They are huge contributors.

I have seen government-assisted refugees—technically this was a BVOR application—show up in my community with nothing, start a chocolate factory and put dozens and dozens of my community members to work. I remember my friend Tareq saying that he experienced for the first time somebody asking why he was coming to Antigonish to take his job. That was the first guy they hired at the chocolate shop.

These are the kinds of stories I hear about from the government-assisted refugees I meet. They run restaurants in my community. There's a young guy named Omar—if you're watching, Omar, hello. It's good to see you.

He opened a lemonade stand outside his parents' restaurant on the Pictou waterfront to save enough money to buy himself a Nintendo Switch. His mom told him about a young boy back home who needed to save money for surgery because he had throat cancer, and Omar spent his summer raising money for some boy he had never met with throat cancer on the other side of the world. Somebody did buy him the Switch, by the way, so it all worked out. But—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Minister, please wrap up.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Sure. I'm sorry. I could talk all day about this, Chair.

Long story short, bringing government-assisted refugees to Canada to complement the strong private sponsorship stream is important. It allows you to effectively target people who you want to bring here, and it allows you to move a lot more quickly than would otherwise be the case.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you, Ms. Damoff.

Now we can move on to round four. I'll go back to Madam Findlay for five minutes.

Please go ahead.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have so many questions.

I still don't entirely understand, Minister, how it is that the IRCC expects people in safe houses and on the run from the Taliban, partly because Canada and its partners leaked database information and partly because the United States left database information behind.... How are they expected to get biometrics done in that country, and how are they expected to access WhatsApp or any kind of Internet application?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

There were a couple of elements to the question. First, on leaked information, no data leak is okay, and no privacy breach is okay. I think the event you are referring to—and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong—involved someone who “replied all” to an email, and the email addresses, in some instances, may have had details about who the individuals were. Other people on the thread, if they uploaded their profile details, could have seen them. We responded by changing the practice so that it was a web form rather than email correspondence, so that kind of thing couldn't happen again.

With respect to people who are sort of moving about the country, are you asking how they are expected to use WhatsApp?

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

No, I said that the IRCC is seeking biometrics done in-country and also online applications filled out for people who are in safe houses and on the run from a ruthless regime. How is that reasonable in your view as minister? Why are there not special exemptions in this specific country?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

First, getting biometrics in-country would be a major development, but it doesn't solve all of the problems. This is one of the challenges that we face, though. Most of the people who are going to do biometrics, as it stands now, will have to secure safe passage outside of the country and do them in a third country, kind of like we've now set up with Ukraine since we had to shut down our visa application centres there during the early days of the invasion.

The safe passage piece is what we need to solve if we're going to allow people to get to third countries where we can safely administer biometrics kits and have people complete the process. It's one of the real challenges when you're dealing with a territory that's been seized by the Taliban.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Minister, part of the problem that I don't understand is that, when we're dealing with people who can be vouched for by Canadians.... This isn't just some country somewhere where people are trying to get out. These are people and their families who have fought alongside Canadians. We have all kinds of veterans reaching out saying, “I know this person. I know their family”. People who served in police services in the military who were interpreters, we know them. There are people here who know them, yet we're still using the same requirements we would for anyone coming from anywhere.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

My view is that, when you're dealing with a conflict zone, the need to deal with a robust security screening process increases. Not only do you deal with people who might be potential bad actors and you didn't realize that—the vast majority of people are good and innocent people who would like to come here; I recognize that—but you also are able to confirm that a person is who they say they are.

When it comes to the screening process, it's really important that we follow the advice of our national security agencies. I'll trust my officials to correct me if I'm wrong here, but my understanding is that about 80% of the cases that are rejected for inadmissibility on security grounds come through the biometrics process.

In addition, before you do biometrics, we do an enhanced biographic screening and get whatever information we can on the basis of a person's name, age, where they've been living, if we have access to a social media page—

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

I understand all that, but the thing is that they're being treated the same, as though they aren't refugees and they're just wanting to come to Canada. We are talking about refugees, people fleeing from persecution and death squads. I don't need to tell you that these are very serious situations they're facing. It's not a normal situation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Madam Findlay. Your time is up.

I will give only a few seconds to you, Ms. Tapley, if you wanted to clarify, as the minister asked you to.

[Catrina Tapley]

No, the minister was correct.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Deputy Minister, and thank you very much, Ms. Findlay.

Now we'll go to Mr. Baker for five minutes.

Please go ahead.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, I want to go back to our commitment to the 40,000. Can you talk about the 40,000 refugees settled in Canada? There are many countries that have been involved in Afghanistan over the past number of years, before the fall of Kabul.

I'm wondering if you can share with us how our commitment and what we've done compares to the commitments and what others have done in terms of resettling refugees.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Sure. Thank you.

Before I do, I want to offer a response because I think this is an important thing for people to understand about this particular conflict. Every refugee initiative that we've launched has a similar security screening process. One thing that my eyes have been opened to is that it's really challenging to respond to a crisis for a refugee purpose in real time as it unfolds.

If you look at Syria, we were dealing with hundreds of thousands of people who had fled, starting three years earlier. The groups that we were pulling people to Canada from were in camps in Lebanon and Jordan and had already been processed by the UNHCR. To deal with people as a conflict emerges and still apply a rigorous security screening process is a whole new level of difficult that I don't think we've dealt with—certainly not in my lifetime.

To Mr. Baker's question, my honestly held belief is that Canada is the best in the world when it comes to resettling people for humanitarian purposes. If I go back to the middle of the pandemic.... I was with the High Commissioner for the UNHCR just a couple of weeks ago in Ottawa. He made the point to anyone who would listen that Canada kept the global system of resettlement alive over the course of the last few years when some other players around the world retracted and the world was shut down for reasons that we all appreciate now.

From my perspective, I was blown away when I came to learn that, in the year 2020, Canada resettled one-third of the total number of refugees resettled around the entire world. I think this is something Canadians should be really proud of. It's not just a government thing. Canadians and communities across the country have embraced refugees with open arms.

On a relative scale of commitments in Afghanistan, on a per capita basis, we're the ball game. On a raw numbers basis, the United States is the tops because they had such a massive evacuation effort. Australia's made a significant commitment with 31,500 over the next four years. I pulled some of these numbers ahead of time. I see that the European Union has a total just shy of 40,000, with 37,000. New Zealand has just shy of 1,500. The United Kingdom has 20,000 over the next few years. They may go further because they have two programs, but I haven't seen clear targets on one. The U.S., of course, has provided support for the resettlement of up to 95,000. We've been working with the U.S. to have some referrals that they've evacuated be resettled in Canada. Some of those people are in process already.

Those are most of the big players on the scene when it comes to the Afghan refugee resettlement. By this time next year, with the exception of the United States, I expect Canada will probably surpass not just where other countries are but potentially their entire goal over the life cycle of this entire effort, which sometimes spans four or five years.

From my perspective, we're owning up to our reputation as being the best in the world at what we do, and this is what we do.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you for that.

I only have about a minute left.

When I asked you earlier, one thing you talked about as the key bottleneck in bringing refugees from Afghanistan more quickly to Canada was the issue of securing safe passage. Can you talk very briefly about what's being done to try to help secure safe passage for those trying to flee Afghanistan?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

This is the biggest challenge I face as immigration minister. Afghanistan is what I've spent more time on than anything else. This is one where every time you feel like there might be a solution or a lead, it seems to escape you.

For reasons I think we can all appreciate, Canada's not on friendly terms with the Taliban. I don't expect that's going to change really soon. We work with partners in the region. We work with international organizations and we work with allies across the world. Different groups have been talking about or planning to set up potential humanitarian assistance programs, but none of these have the capacity to secure safe passage or do the in-country biometrics that we discussed during a previous question.

We work with Aman Lara, which is a veteran-run organization that has now successfully moved 2,700 people outside of the country. Every time we find an opportunity to work with a non-profit partner, an international organization or another state partner, we try to connect with them to figure out how we can work with them to move people throughout the country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Baker.

We'll go to Monsieur Brunelle-Duceppe for two and a half minutes.

Please go ahead.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you again for meeting with us today and for doing such a great job answering our questions.

I appreciate the minister making himself available to the committee for two hours. We are certainly grateful.

One thing I admire about the immigration minister is that he seems to have a lot of common sense. That brings me back to the last question I asked him.

Afghan interpreters who underwent security screenings by the Canadian Armed Forces are now being made to provide biometric information. If we apply some common sense to the situation, it's clear that there's a problem with that requirement.

Minister, I'd like you to confirm what you told me earlier. Did you really say that the Canadian Armed Forces had lower security standards than IRCC in relation to Afghan interpreters? It's a straightforward question.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

No. I would describe it in a different way. I understand where you're coming from, but I think when you're dealing with people who may not have been connected very much over the past decade to the Government of Canada, when you're dealing with others who've not had that same relationship and maybe haven't gone through the screening process before—

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

I'm really talking about Afghan interpreters who underwent security screenings by the Canadian Armed Forces and who now find themselves having to hide, flee or find a biometric data collection centre despite having already gone through the process. It's ridiculous, really. I think we can do better than that for these people. I think we can exercise some common sense here. That's a quality I admire about you.