Afghanistan Committee on Feb. 14th, 2022

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

Mr. Chair, since Dean Milner and I wrote the letter together and we have prepared the written statement, which you have, I could finish my statement if that is acceptable to you and the rest of the members.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

I don't have consent on that. Sorry, Mr. Fraser. I gave you five minutes. I have to look to Mr. Milner, because he has five minutes to speak as well, as an individual.

It seems we have some difficulty hearing Mr. Milner. We can go to the next witness and then come back to Mr. Milner when the technical team finishes.

I will go to Mr. Oliver Thorne for five minutes, please.

[Oliver Thorne, Executive Director, Veterans Transition Network]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

General Milner, there might be a mute button on the headset as well, if you received one from the Government of Canada. Even if you unmute in the program, there may be a little remote along the wire that might be the issue.

Mr. Chair, and ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Oliver Thorne. I'm the executive director with the Veterans Transition Network, which is a registered Canadian charity. Until very recently, our entire focus was delivering mental health programs, counselling programs, for veterans of the Canadian Forces and RCMP.

I'll try to keep my statement brief, to the background of our involvement in the Afghan campaign and the key takeaways that we've learned working on this over the previous six months.

First and foremost, as I said, our organization typically runs counselling programs for Canadian veterans. We have a network of veterans and graduates across Canada that we are in close contact with.

In July, we were approached by General Fraser, General Milner and General Thompson who were forming a group of concerned veterans and organizations known as ASET, the Afghan Strategic Evacuation Team. They were working to help prepare and support the government evacuation that was going to take place after the fall of Kabul and asked if the Veterans Transition Network could become involved as the financial arm to raise funds and issue tax receipts to support that effort.

We joined that effort early in August. Initially, our goal was to raise $500,000 Canadian to support a small number of safe houses for the 100 individuals whom General Fraser spoke about earlier.

Over the course of the middle of August, Afghanistan entirely fell to the Taliban much faster than anticipated, so all of our efforts were kicked into very high gear.

Throughout that time, through our fundraising efforts, we funded an individual who you might know as “Canadian Dave”. He is a former special forces operator with the Canadian Forces who took a team to the Hamid Karzai International Airport and assisted the evacuation efforts there and also operated a number of safe houses, providing shelter for people who had come from outlying areas within Afghanistan into Kabul in preparation for the evacuation.

After the government airlift ended, there were very limited options for individuals to get out of the country. Again, with Dave and with the rest of the ASET team, we also continued to fund our own evacuation efforts.

To date, the fundraising campaign has raised $4.5 million. Almost $3.5 million has gone directly to the safe houses and to the evacuation efforts that I mentioned just now.

To date, our best estimate is that we've supported the evacuation of 892 individuals through the funding we've raised and through the organizations that General Fraser talked about in his statement.

The takeaways that I think we have from this effort are, first, that the Canadian Forces veterans are deeply invested in helping their Afghan interpreters. As General Fraser spoke about, these individuals worked alongside Canadian Forces personnel, in the same vehicles, wearing the same uniforms. They were not just interpreters; they were cultural advisers, and in many cases, their local information and knowledge helped save Canadian lives.

In addition to that, Canadians are supportive of Canadian veterans, so by extension, they are very supportive of the Afghans who we are trying to help. This is evident through the incredible response to this fundraising campaign and this evacuation campaign across Canada.

The third point is that the Canadian government was not prepared for the collapse of the Afghan government and the resulting humanitarian crisis. The result was a hasty announcement of an immigration program that IRCC was not sufficiently prepared for or staffed to execute.

The fourth point is that risk aversion on the part of the Canadian government has resulted in policy that has tied the hands of hard-working government employees who are doing their best to execute and assist this evacuation effort, but policy has hog-tied them.

Finally, the result is that Canadian veterans, the public and charities have stepped in to fill this void at their own risk, financially and otherwise, in order to support this effort.

Thank you. I welcome your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Mr. Thorne. You are well within the time frame.

I am going to check one more time before I go to the honourable members to see if Mr. Milner—

[Major-General, Retired) Dean Milner (Major General (Retired), Afghan Strategic Evacuation Team, As an Individual]

Can you hear me?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Yes. We can hear you now.

[MGen (Ret'd) Dean Milner]

That's great.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

You have five minutes. Please go ahead.

[MGen (Ret'd) Dean Milner]

It must be the fact that I'm in Mexico, or something like that, but anyway, Mr. Chair and ladies and gentlemen, I am retired Major-General Dean Milner. Thanks for this opportunity to provide some feedback. I will try to be brief, as I've heard some great points from both David and Oliver.

The bottom line is that I'm very passionate about what happened in Afghanistan. I was the last commander in Kandahar. I commanded our war-fighting mission. I was also the last commander to leave Afghanistan in 2014, when I sadly had to give the Canadian flag to our ambassador when we left with all of our forces from the training mission in 2014.

I joined the team along with the other two generals, Dave Fraser and Denis Thompson, and a number of others, mostly former military personnel, to assist with the evacuation of our interpreters and those who had so graciously worked for us over in Afghanistan.

During my couple of years, I could not have done the mission and couldn't have completed the mission without these tremendous Afghans who served alongside us, who fought alongside us. We lost many of those great Afghans. The bottom line is that I dearly support those great Afghans, and I really wanted to make sure this this government moved ahead and tried to evacuate them.

We didn't do that well. I'll be very honest. I think we managed to evacuate 3,000 before the air bridge was closed, but due to bureaucracy at Immigration Canada and the fact that really there was not clear leadership and there was not a clear plan, it was very difficult for us to support and assist the mission. Really, we only managed to pull out maybe about 15% to 17% of those critical interpreters who soldiered alongside us.

After that, we continued to push for some kind of leadership. We really wanted somebody to take the ball. That did not happen. We really continued to seek the efforts of the government, and we were prepared to assist, but again, it has been a very slow and arduous process. We've moved out maybe 200 here or 150 there. It is very difficult. The bureaucratic paperwork process is far too slow. We keep hearing that there's going to be leadership, that somebody is going to take charge, but there's really nobody taking charge.

Canada can do a lot better than this. We have 10,000.... The Prime Minister said that we're going to move out 40,000. Forty thousand—we have moved out maybe 4,500. It's not enough. It's inexcusable. We need to move out more Afghans, those who soldiered alongside us. It's a moral obligation. We need to do better. Other countries have done a lot better than we have, so I really am asking for more support and more leadership. I'm prepared to answer any questions that you'd like.

We have done okay, but it's not good enough. We will continue to work with our team, the Afghan Strategic Evacuation Team, along with a number of other key networks, the Veterans Transition Network, the Afghan-Canadian Interpreters, and a number of other key organizations. We want to team up with people to help bring these Afghans out.

I'm open to questions. Again, I'm very passionate about this situation. I just feel that as Canadians we can do that much better.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very Major-General Milner. We appreciate that.

Are the bells ringing, Madam Clerk? How many minutes do we have right now?

Do I have consent to go until 5:30 p.m. with this and then stop?

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

Do you mean 5:30 p.m. your time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Yes, 8:30 p.m., so Madam Kwan gets six minutes as well.

Is it okay? Yes? That's great. Thank you.

Without wasting any more time, I'm going to our first round.

Mr. Ruff, you have six minutes. Please be sensitive to the time.

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

Thank you, Chair.

First off, my thanks to General Milner, General Fraser and Oliver Thorne for being here. Thanks especially to the generals, although I believe all of you had time in uniform. Your service is greatly appreciated, especially in Afghanistan and in everything you have done over the last, well, it's coming on a number of months, anyway, since last summer to help get these Afghans out.

I want to focus on these issues that General Milner was getting to about how foreseeable this situation was. I know that the generals penned that letter, but I mean, we had intelligence information. We knew when President Trump had indicated that this was going to happen. The intelligence and all the sources were indicating that this was quite a possibility. Do you think the Government of Canada should have taken action sooner?

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

Is that open to any one of us?

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

It is. Go ahead, General.

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

The short answer is, yes, we saw this coming. If three retired generals without access to intelligence saw this coming in July, there could have been a lot more people evacuated out of Afghanistan before Kandahar fell and before Kabul fell. This is, again, on the shoulders of Canadians, and I don't mean just the military. We could have actually done more.

Since the fall of Afghanistan and since the closure of the air bridge, there is certainly a lot more we could have done to bring out...I think it's about 7,000 in total, maybe about 5,000 in this country, to actually meet that 40,000 target. We can do better than this.

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

Thanks, General.

Can you or General Milner elaborate on the impact of closing the embassy? How did that add to the confusion and the chaos of trying to do the coordination of this mission and the lack of support from the diplomatic side of the house?

[MGen (Ret'd) Dean Milner]

I can jump in there. Thanks. That's a great question.

That was a huge challenge. We moved our embassy out way too fast, there's no doubt in my mind. As a matter of fact, we were the first embassy to depart. That was very embarrassing for a lot of us on the ground. They could have been a lot of help. I [Technical difficulty—Editor] was working with a number of them in the embassy, and all of a sudden, boom, they were gone. I think we could have reacted quicker.

There are comparisons with the Syrian mission, because I was involved in that one, where we pulled 25,000 out. We put an aggressive whole-of-government team on the ground with the military, with IRCC, and we threw them a whole bunch of money. We pulled people out. There was no bureaucracy. There wasn't all this paperwork to pull out the critical people. We could have pulled people [Technical difficulty—Editor] third party location. There's no doubt in my mind that we would have managed to get a lot more people out.

Yes, a number of things could have been done a lot better than they were. Absolutely, moving the embassy out was embarrassingly way too fast.

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

Thanks, General Milner.

I'll come back to you or General Fraser on the comments about the lack of leadership and not one department; not one minister. You know my background, and I know that you guys were well tied into the Canadian Armed Forces capabilities. To my understanding, they could have done more, sooner. We've had testimony that there were forces prepared to go in and start to get Afghans out sooner.

Would you attribute it to a lack of political will or just a lack of one minister sort of taking the bull by the horns and actually doing the coordination function that needed to happen, considering we had Immigration, Foreign Affairs, Defence and everybody involved?

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

To put it simply, it's all of the above. Canada was a world leader during the combat mission when we were there. We created a super deputy minister and we had an interdepartmental task force that actually harnessed the power of a whole-of-government team. It actually brought tremendous strategic credit to this nation.

When this crisis was unfolding right in front of our eyes, we then urged the government, as we do now, to create an interdepartmental task force with one leader. There has to be one minister that has the pre-eminent authority and responsibility to manage across the different departments the needs of IRCC, Global Affairs Canada, Safety, and Defence and the resources necessary to pull these Afghans out of the country and back to this country safely so that we have the right people.

We need to repeat what we've already done in the past. Over.

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

Thanks, General.

[MGen (Ret'd) Dean Milner]

Those are great points. I would add really quickly that there has to be a plan, and we've offered a plan, but we have not seen that plan. We have not seen a government plan with the leadership to execute. We've seen bits and pieces from a number of people. We wrote a plan and offered that plan, but again, we did not see that plan taken. We never did see a plan from the government; we were really hoping to see that.

I would add that. Thank you.

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

Thanks, Generals, and witnesses.

Chair, I understand my time is up. My last request would be for the generals to table their letters with the clerk. I know General Fraser indicated he sent it, but the clerk seems to indicate she doesn't have it.

General Fraser, General Milner and Mr. Thorne, could you table your opening remarks with the committee, please?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

I'm going to ask a quick question of the members present in the committee room or anyone. Is there any will for them to go vote personally in the House of Commons? I would have to adjust the time. If not, I'm going to carry on. Thank you.

The next honourable member is Mr. Baker for six minutes.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thanks very much, Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for being here today. Generals Fraser and Milner, thank you for your service in Afghanistan and throughout your careers for this country.

Mr. Thorne, thank you for being here as well and for all that you've been doing.

Gentlemen, what I'm really interested in is how we help folks now as much as possible

General Fraser, I think you've articulated quite clearly, especially in your opening remarks, why folks need help. What I'm interested in is how we do that going forward, so if you don't mind, I would like to focus my questions on that.

I'd like to start by asking, what are the greatest challenges to helping folks now and how do we overcome them?

Anyone can take that question.