Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable committee members, for the invitation to speak with you today on Afghanistan. I am an immigration and refugee law partner at Landings LLP, a law firm in Toronto.
Last July, before the fall of Kabul, I began receiving desperate messages about individuals needing urgent assistance. To respond to this demand, Landings partnered with a Canadian national firm on a pro bono basis. We filed approximately 400 individuals under the special immigration program. In August I began working with a judicial organization to troubleshoot the processing of resettlement for female judges and their family members. I now belong to a task force that meets regularly to discern next steps for these individuals as the situation evolves.
Officials are working extremely hard. There's also no lack of political will in terms of the Canadians and what they want to see happen in Afghanistan, but nine months later issues continue to linger. Afghanistan poses some structural challenges—all refugee situations do—but some solutions are outside of our control. Others are in our control. I make four recommendations to you today centred on factors that are within our control.
Number one, we need a standing interdepartmental cabinet committee that reports to Parliament and that harnesses both institutional memory of what we do in refugee situations and a proactive emergency framework. We have to be prepared before the moment requires it. This committee would be crucial in terms of bringing together all the key decision-makers at a moment's notice. We know that situations in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Ukraine are occurring and that refugee situations are not going to disappear. This standing committee would allow us to respond in a more timely fashion.
Number two is a recommendation to explore more aggressively flexible non-refugee streams to get individuals outside of Afghanistan where refugee options are not feasible. This would include things like study permits, work permits and authorization for emergency travel.
Number three—and I know the committee has heard this before—is widespread prima facie refugee designations for at-risk Afghans. It is crucial that we not waste invaluable time with redundant exercises, but instead have the officers focus on inadmissibility and security. Those are key considerations. We already know that at-risk Afghans are refugees. We don't need a partner organization that has different mandates to tell us that. The fall of Kabul really showed us why we cannot rely primarily on partner organizations for this designation. We know that the government has recently permitted the waiver of UNHCR designation for a number of select Afghans through the private resettlement stream. We need to do this in a more widespread manner.
Finally, we need a more reasoned approach to security with respect to both biometrics and our concerns regarding Criminal Code terrorism provisions. That doesn't presuppose a zero level of risk. No government action is zero risk. We have to manage the risk.
Mr. Chair, I look forward to your questions. Thank you for this opportunity.