Afghanistan Committee on April 25th, 2022

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Hazaras have already been resettled in Canada. There could be more if they get referred into our program by our referral partners.

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

You said that 11,500 of the 40,000 expected Afghans had arrived in Canada thus far. At that rate, I'm sure you would agree that we won't even reach half of the target.

Is there a new target? What are you going to do if you don't reach the target?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I am very confident that we will attain our target. I see the regular pace of arrivals now. I've been seeing a number of flights coming in each week during the last few months. I do see that we have a regular pace. The biggest challenge to meeting our target on the schedule of next year, that I've discussed, no longer has anything to do with the capacity of IRCC. It's whether we can secure safe passage for the people we've made a commitment to who are still in Afghanistan. There are about 10,000 who have already been through the eligibility approval process and are still in the country now. Solving that safe passage through and outside of Afghanistan will be the next bottleneck we need to address.

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

You think you'll be able to reach the target, then.

If possible, I would like the department to send the committee a detailed plan of projected arrivals until the end of 2022. Table form would be fine. I simply want to know the rate at which the department is planning to bring in refugees to meet the target. You said that you would meet the target, so logically, I would think the department has a plan to do that. It would be helpful to the committee to see that plan.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Minister, the time is up, but you can respond quickly.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

There is no specific schedule for the exact number of people. We are seeing a flight with a few hundred people on a weekly basis. I expect something like that to continue, subject to the challenge I mentioned on the safe passage issue for those who are still in the country.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe.

We will now go to Ms. Kwan for six minutes.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the minister for coming to our committee.

I want to follow up on the former interpreters issue. With respect to the additional documents that are being required of them, many of them would not be able to produce them because they have actually had to burn them. The family members had to burn them. What they are asking the government, in those instances, generally speaking, is to waive the onerous documentation requirements and to provide them with a single travel journey document, so that they can exit Afghanistan to a third country.

Will the minister do that, similarly to what is being done for Ukrainians?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Just to clarify, that is a bit different from what is being done for Ukrainians. We can issue single journey travel documents for people who are seeking to come to Canada from Afghanistan or a third country, but they get the travel document after they have completed the process. The challenge I see with what you propose, which is issuing a single journey travel document that would allow them to exit Afghanistan, is that it doesn't actually solve the safe passage issue.

I'm sorry. It looks like you want to jump back in.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I do want to jump back in.

First, for them to actually get out of Afghanistan, they need to have that as a travel document. Then we can talk about exiting the third country, but without that first document, they can't go anywhere and they are stuck in Afghanistan.

Will the minister issue single journey travel documents for these Afghans?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

A Canadian single journey travel document doesn't guarantee you entry into a country, from Afghanistan into Pakistan or Tajikistan, for example. The requirements to enter into those countries will be set by those countries. Having a travel document to come to Canada doesn't satisfy that requirement.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

According to the Afghan witnesses, or the witnesses who presented to committee, many of them have actually said that if you present them with a single journey travel document, they will find a way to get to a third country. There seems to be some discrepancy. The minister is saying that even if they got one, they can't get into a third country. They're saying that they could. Even so, the minister is not issuing those documents to them and is requiring them to provide all kinds of documentation, which some of them will not have because they have had to burn them.

That is the reality. I ask that the minister please understand that. If the idea is that the single journey travel document is not a thing that will work, then find a mechanism that will work. Right now, none of it is working and people cannot get to safety.

I want to raise another issue as well regarding the people who have actually made it to Pakistan. I have been advised that there are about 700 Afghans who have actually made it to Pakistan, but Canada has not done the final step to bring them here to Canada. Will the minister organize evacuation flights for those individuals?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Evacuation flights from Pakistan.... There are people who are in Pakistan who are able to leave now. An evacuation flight wouldn't necessarily.... It's a solution to a problem that we're not having right now.

The issues facing people who have made it into Pakistan depend greatly on the individual case files, oftentimes on the basis of which a person has entered into Pakistan, particularly when people have crossed into Pakistan in an unofficial way. There's a big challenge for certain people who didn't enter with proper documentation to leave Pakistan, even though they have very good reasons for not having that documentation.

I don't think an evacuation flight solves the problem of getting people here. If there are people who have been approved to come to Canada, we're seeing there's an ability for people to be moved from Pakistan to Canada.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

There is no question that some people actually entered Pakistan or a third country illegally because they had no other means to do so. It's the only way they can actually get away as best they can from the Taliban. We have to recognize that.

For them to be in that third country, for them to fly to Canada, it means a single journey travel document would assist them. Waiving those documentation requirements would assist them. It means waiving the refugee determination requirements which, by the way, they would need if they were to extend their stay in a country such as Pakistan, for example, because the visa in Pakistan would actually expire. All of those things come together.

The minister needs to look at these issues not with tunnel vision but with a broad vision as to the combination of approaches that could be done to assist individuals. Instead of saying that doing this or that won't help, if you did all of these together, it would actually make a difference.

This is what the families are urging the minister to do.

I'm quickly running out of time, but I also want to ask this: Has the minister considered women athletes as women leaders? None of them have been able to get access to come to Canada safely.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I don't try to delve too deeply, after we set the criteria, into selecting which groups qualify for the program. Certainly, I think some could. We allocate spaces to referral partners who then identify people, typically based on their vulnerability. We make sure that we're bringing in people who are at risk of persecution.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

On the question around groups to determine who meets the vulnerability requirements, would the minister expand the groups to agencies such as Amnesty International and other reputable organizations to waive the refugee determination requirements?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I don't want to announce, not having spoken with other groups, that we're going to have new referral partners come on. I'm happy to consider what recommendations the committee may make. The groups that we work with are not unprofessional or don't have the capacity. I'm talking about the UNHCR, for example.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I'm sorry. I'm not suggesting that they're unprofessional. I'm simply saying that you need to expand the number of groups.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Kwan, your time is up.

I have to go to my own member of Parliament, Madam Findlay, for five minutes, please.

Go ahead.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Through you, Mr. Chair, to the minister, this committee has heard a lot of testimony from many witnesses describing your department as slow to react, overly bureaucratic, risk-averse and even indifferent to the fate of our Afghan allies and their families.

When I put that to you, I am distinguishing between the allies, the Afghan allies of ours who fought alongside our Canadians, helping them with language and culture, and those who were already outside of Afghanistan waiting as refugees to come here. You've mentioned several times and spent quite a bit of time on the 40,000 number, but that does not help these people and their families who were promised that, for helping us and standing up for us, they would be helped to come here.

What do you say for your department when we are hearing this testimony week after week in this committee?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

My starting point, first, is that I have come to know the people who work in the department, who work in my office and who worked in the previous minister's office. Indifference could not be further from the truth. These are honest, hard-working people who want to do whatever they can to save the lives of people who made a contribution to Canada. I think that's common, frankly, with staff and members from all parties.

One thing that I think is really important for us to reflect on is that the challenges and delays are driven by circumstances that are touched by violent conflicts.

I'll acknowledge as well that I don't think that permanent, ordinary refugee resettlement programs are particularly well designed to respond to crises as they occur in real time. There are a certain number of things we've done with respect to Afghanistan that are very unique to try to address some of those. Again, when I look at the other crisis we're dealing with from a migration point of view, in Ukraine, different innovative tools we were able to develop to respond to that crisis—

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

I'm sorry. I only have a limited amount of time.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Sure, it's your time.

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

We're not getting to the specifics. You talk about timelines. There was a time, before the withdrawal in Afghanistan, when this government had a good five months to get people out and had freedom of movement. They were supporting countries. We had diplomatic relations then. Why didn't this government act sooner to help our allies and their families then?