Afghanistan Committee on May 9th, 2022

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

Mr. Chair, for reasons of operational security, we're not going to get into the exact composition of the team, but I'm going to turn it over to the commander of our special operations forces command, Major General Steve Boivin, to say what he can without compromising us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Major General Boivin, please answer briefly because the time is up.

[Major-General Steve Boivin, Commander, Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, Department of National Defence]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We deployed the strategic advisory team on April 24 in support of the ambassador in order to conduct a contingency plan for the potential evacuation of the Canadian embassy.

We always task-tailor these teams. Depending on the situation and the task assigned to the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, we send a team that is of an appropriate size with the appropriate capabilities to deliver on the task that is assigned to us. In this specific case, it was a very small team in single digit numbers.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ruff.

We will go to the last speaker before we let the minister go.

Mr. Sidhu, you have three and a half minutes. Please go ahead.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, first and foremost, I'd like to thank you and the entire armed forces for your tireless efforts. It was not an easy situation, as you mentioned earlier. We did not have significant assets on the ground, but we were able to lean on our allies for some support as we have not had an active role in Afghanistan for some years now.

Speaking about limited resources, and considering the situation during that time, can you please tell this committee how Canada maximized the number of people we evacuated? I'd love to hear from you or any of your leadership that is here with you today.

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

To begin, this is a very important piece of information that you're asking for at the current time. To determine how many passengers could be loaded onto an aircraft, our RCAF air crew had to take into account a number of factors—I previously mentioned some of them—to ensure that the Afghan nationals in question could reach their destination.

The highest priority in balancing those factors that I mentioned earlier was the safety of the individuals being transported. I think that we can all appreciate here the level of rigour that goes into ensuring that each and every flight is conducted in a safe manner. Our aircraft were originally configured to safely carry a certain maximum number of people. We did update this configuration to accommodate additional people to the degree possible, taking into account the factors at play. These were, for example, the type of aircraft, the weather, the situation on the ground and so on.

Those are all points that General Eyre has alluded to as well, but I will ask him if he has anything else to add.

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

Mr. Chair, first let me say the fact that we were able to project combat power from Canada into a contested environment on the other side of the world where we had not had a military presence for seven years and rescue 3,700 people is pretty amazing when you think about it.

How were we able to do that? First, we took advantage of the strategic lift capability that we had, specifically in the form of the C-17s.

Second, with the strategic communications aspect that we had, we were able to monitor the situation and feed minute-to-minute and hour-to-hour intelligence and communications back and forth across the globe.

Third, we took advantage of the incredible network of partners and allies that we have around the world and the embedded staff that we have in leadership positions in such places as U.S. Central Command headquarters and outside the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff office in the Pentagon. With our task force in Kuwait, we housed many of the Afghans that we brought out. We had personnel in the combined air operations centre—the CAOC as we call it—in Qatar. Leveraging that network allowed us to very efficiently work with our allies and make sure this was well coordinated.

If we want to get into more details, I have Vice-Admiral Auchterlonie here who managed many of those details on an hour-to-hour basis, but time may be limiting us here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

The time is up, but go ahead very briefly, Vice-Admiral Auchterlonie.

[VAdm J.R. Auchterlonie]

Thank you very much.

Just to follow on from the chief, I think he mentioned the key points there. The fact is that having folks embedded with the alliances, the authorities necessary, the strategic lift and the readiness of our forces enabled us to do this.

There are two key points I just want to highlight. We were able to put folks forward very quickly and we operate at the speed of crisis. We saw the crisis evolving over a period of weeks and then we made sure we had folks forward, working with our allies, to enable this to happen on the ground.

We can examine this further when we have more time after the minister, but I think one of the key parts is to delineate between the two periods of time. The fact is that when we were in crisis to evacuate after Kabul fell, the people on the ground had the authorities necessary to execute the mission. It was that major on the ground in HKIA and it was that young captain flying the C-17 who made the decision to embark 534 people on board. That wasn't my decision; it was delegated at the lowest level. The young aircraft captain flying the C-17 and a young captain co-pilot made the decision to save 535 people.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Mr. Sidhu. Your time is up.

On behalf of the committee members, I would like to thank Minister Anand for being here and having an important conversation. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

We'll suspend the meeting for a few minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

I call the meeting back to order. We will continue with our second panel.

I want to thank you, General Eyre, your leadership team, and the deputy minister for staying with us for the next hour to have an important conversation with the honourable members. It went really well in the first hour. I hope to continue in the same tone and be respectful of the time and the position that the person is taking.

Mr. Ruff, you have six minutes. Please go ahead.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

I just want to build off of the question around the strategic advisory team. It's not so much about that but about the embassy and the force protection elements.

This may be a question more for you, Admiral Auchterlonie. When did we pull out our military personnel from the force protection task at the embassy in Kabul?

[VAdm J.R. Auchterlonie]

I think that just goes back to our earlier comments. The fact is that, as noted by the chief, we put the strategic advisory team in as well as.... So the SAT team was in Kabul as well as the force protection team.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

I'm talking about that original force protection team task that we had at the embassy, back in the day, that was doing force protection at the embassy for the ambassador. Did that switch out from being...you know, as a small number? I don't want to get into specifics.

[VAdm J.R. Auchterlonie]

Yes. Thanks very much. That predated me, because I was away from CJOC for three years.

I'll give it to the chief.

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

Mr. Chair, I was actually on the ground in Afghanistan in 2014 when we lowered the flag at ISAF headquarters and the Canadians moved out. That's when Operation Addenda was established to provide force protection for the Canadian embassy.

I do not know the exact year that we transitioned that to a private security company. I believe it was in the 2017-18 time frame, but we'll be able to take that on notice and—

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Yes. If you could just pass that back to the committee, it would be appreciated.

With Operation Aegis, was that the name of the operation immediately starting in April, and was it a CANSOF or a CJOC supported commander function or operation?

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

Mr. Chair, Operation Aegis began on July 30, with me issuing what's called a CDS directive, to begin the operation, which was focused on the evacuation.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Prior to that, CANSOF would have been the supported commander.

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

We generally don't give named operations to a strategic advisory team with an embassy.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Got you. But CANSOF was the—

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

Yes.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Got you.

From the lessons learned that the minister mentioned and acknowledged was ongoing since, who led the CAF portion of the lessons-learned process? Was it an SJS and CJOC lead? Who led it?

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

Mr. Chair, as you will remember, we conduct after-action reviews at each level. SOFCOM conducted their own after action review. CJOC conducted their own, and we did a Canadian Armed Forces one led by SJS.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Would it be possible to get a copy of that report, even if it has to be vetted, I guess, to some extent, although there are members of the committee who do have the appropriate security clearances?