Afghanistan Committee on Feb. 14th, 2022

[MGen (Ret'd) Dean Milner]

I'd like to jump in.

General Fraser has outlined the fact that it's a horrible situation over there. It continues to get worse. We can't trust the Taliban. We know that for a fact. The bottom line is that we do need a plan. We need a whole-of-government plan. This is big. We need GAC. We need IRCC. We need the whole team, the forces, to get together.

The Prime Minister said 40,000 people. We have 10,000 who are still over there in these horrible conditions. The bottom line is that we do need a plan. We need to lead. We need to get people on the ground. We need to get people into Pakistan. There are a number of things that can be done, but they need to be done quickly. We hear it's a priority. We hear from cabinet meetings that it's a priority, but we just do not feel that it's a priority.

We're willing to help. We have great people who are willing to help. It's very difficult for us to see things happening in Immigration Canada and across the government. We have great people who are willing to help. We have people we can put on the ground to help the situation. We did that, and that's how we pulled out some of these tremendous Afghans.

All that being said, we've written another letter to Minister Fraser asking to speak to him to offer assistance. There has been no response, zero response. It's embarrassing. We'd like to help, and I'm sure that both Oliver and General Fraser would say the same thing. We want to help more, and we would like to see some leadership, a team and a plan. We love plans. Plans will help us execute and get things done.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

General, I appreciate that.

I have about three minutes left, so I will ask the next question. I hear you, General, and I appreciate that. You're speaking to me now, and I want to learn and be able to raise the right points with the minister as well.

If you were developing that plan—and I know we don't have a lot of time—what are some of the key things? I'm hearing about challenges like getting folks out of Afghanistan into Pakistan, for example. Is that correct? Is that a challenge? How do we overcome that? I understand that IRCC has been trying to help folks once they reach Pakistan. Is that working? What more do we need to do? These are some of my questions. What are the elements of that plan? What I really want to know is how we help folks now that we are where we are.

[Oliver Thorne]

I have a few suggestions along that line. These are in order of preference, if you will.

I talked earlier about risk aversion. I think that's one of the big challenges that's getting in the way of bringing people to Canada. The way that challenge manifests is in biometric verification for applicants to the special immigration measures program. Without the ability to deliver biometrics in country, which we cannot do without a Canadian consular presence, they have to go to a third country before they can come to Canada. That means we have to deal with all the paperwork requirements to get them into that third country. Remember, most of the individuals we're talking to do not have passports. Without a passport they can't get a visa and without a visa they can't go into the country.

Again, these are some pieces that the government seems reticent to implement because of risk aversion. The ideal solution would be the ability to bring people to Canada without biometric verification and do the verification in Canada. That's the best solution.

If that's not possible, a solution to biometrics in country, in Afghanistan, is the second-best solution. If not, enhance communication at least with neighbouring countries, so that we can get people into those countries and do biometrics as quickly as possible. Things like a laissez-passer or a single use travel document that Canada could issue to Afghans to move into Pakistan, UAE, Tajikistan or anywhere where we have the ability to then provide biometric identification.

The last thing I will put in a plug for is for the Canadian government, through Global Affairs, to continue funding organizations within ASET, like Aman Lara, that are doing this evacuation work, and expanding what those funds can be used for as much as possible. At the moment they cannot be used for temporary accommodations, which are desperately needed, because of government policy. Anything the government can do to relax those constraints on the funding they're providing to organizations will be enormously helpful.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

My time is up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Mr. Baker.

Now we will go to Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe for six minutes.

Please be sharp and on time.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here. I also want to thank them for their service and for their work on the ground since the start of the crisis. We're very grateful to them.

Major‑General Milner, you said that you didn't get a response from IRCC or Minister Fraser. The same goes for Mr. Thorne and Major‑General Fraser.

Mr. Baker said that he would speak to the minister. With all due respect to Mr. Baker, I have some good news for you. Tomorrow, at the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, we'll be meeting with Minister Fraser. I'm giving you the opportunity this evening to send me the questions that you want me to ask him tomorrow at the meeting. You can send them to me. I guarantee that at least one of those three questions will be asked.

I'd like to hear from the three witnesses.

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

The first thing I would ask is what the plan is.

What is the plan to get the 40,000 Afghans to this country? When is that plan going to be executed? What are the monthly metrics of how many people you want to have coming out of Afghanistan to come to this country?

If biometrics is such a hard thing, we have some of the greatest technology companies in the world in this country. We can actually have secure technology such that the data never goes into the country. It is a dumb machine that transmits the data with telecommunications back to a safe location where it never goes out and never gets exposed. Use technology to get across the biometric issues.

What is the plan? What is the milestone?

Stop sending emails. Be transparent with the Afghan applicants and start talking to them person to person. Great Britain, the United States, France and Ukraine sent people into Kabul to grab people out of the country. Canada sent an email. That's not good enough.

Let's open up the lines and talk to real people and start giving them hope and opportunity.

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

Mr. Thorne, do you have a question for the minister?

I could ask it for you at the meeting tomorrow.

[Oliver Thorne]

Thank you, sir.

I think General Fraser summed it up admirably.

The only piece I would add is to really hammer that question of biometrics. What is the solution to biometrics? What is on the table?

Again the ideal solution is to bring people to Canada without biometrics and do that after the fact. If not, a biometric solution in country would be better.

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

Thank you.

This committee is so important. As we said, we want to help people now and as quickly as possible.

Could you tell me, Mr. Thorne, given your responsibilities, how Canadian veterans who gave their word to their Afghan collaborators are responding? How do the veterans feel about their collaborators?

It's important to ask the question.

[Oliver Thorne]

Thank you very much for the question. It's absolutely one that's important to be asked.

With a great deal of frustration, in some cases desperation, our day-to-day job for the last six months has been helping veterans with mental health issues. Already throughout the process and the fall of Afghanistan we saw the impact of that on their mental health, on their well-being, to the point where we brought together our clinical network from across Canada to do some additional training and consultation on this, because the topic was coming up again and again in the programs that we continue to run.

How specifically does the issue of interpreters impact veterans? It impacts them right at home, because the interpreters are reaching out to Canadian Forces veterans asking them for help, asking them to help them with their applications, to help provide letters of reference so that they can be vetted and approved to come to Canada.

In many cases they are also providing them with funding. They're helping them to book travel plans. They're giving them their own money to pay for their temporary accommodations whether that's in Kabul or Pakistan, or somewhere else on their journey to Canada. This is impacting them enormously.

I'll give one example. We have a veteran who's been a long-time supporter of our organization. His name is Trevor Street. He lives in British Columbia. He spent tens of thousands of dollars of his own money in July to take out ad campaigns in newspapers in Ottawa with a photo of his interpreter, who was killed by the Taliban, asking why a program has not been announced. That was in July.

We see examples like that all across Canada. We have spoken to dozens of veterans over the previous months who have had some deep level of involvement helping their personal interpreters.

It is incredibly detrimental to the mental health of Canada's veterans to not be able to help them and to see them still waiting to come here when the veterans are getting messages daily talking about how dangerous it is.

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

I gather that it directly affects the people who helped us in Afghanistan and who are trying to leave the country, obviously. However, it also affects the mental health of our veterans. It creates anxiety. They feel indebted to these people and they can't help them because their government isn't taking action.

What are you most disappointed about in terms of this government and the current crisis?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much. Your time is up.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Madam Kwan, we'll go to you for six minutes, please.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all the witnesses for their service, their incredible work and their ongoing advocacy.

You are absolutely correct. I think the government dropped the ball. I still remember when the former minister of immigration was asked the question about resettlement. The response was to say that they could use the existing immigration measures, which we know was not going to be possible.

With that being said, moving forward on what can be done and what needs to be done, have you proposed to the government waiving the biometrics? It is absolutely paramount to waive the administrative and paperwork requirement. If so, what was their response?

Mr. Thorne.

[Oliver Thorne]

I would actually defer to my colleagues, General Fraser and General Milner, as they have had more direct communication with the government on this.

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

I can jump in quickly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

General Fraser, go ahead.

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

We've made all those recommendations. We said we would work with the government on options on how to do that. Fundamentally we agreed that nobody should come into this country who shouldn't be here. You waive it at that end and you isolate them and then you do all the necessary biometrics and due diligence so we get the right people here. If they don't meet the requirements, you send them home. You send them back to Afghanistan.

The thing is to take them out of harm's way, do the vetting, bring them here or to a third party. We made all those recommendations, but the risk aversion is it's in the “too hard to do” column.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Would you be able to table with the committee the recommendations you've made to the government, so that we have them on the public record of the committee?

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

Yes. We can come up with all the letters and recommendations, because we still talk to IRCC and Global Affairs on a weekly basis, when we make all these recommendations. When the interdepartmental task force was up and running, we gave them the same recommendations.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

[MGen (Ret'd) Dean Milner]

I would just add that it's an opportunity for the government to be aggressive. We've talked biometrics. They can put a big team on the ground over in somewhere like Pakistan, very similar to what we did with Syria. We put in a whole-of-government team. You can actually do a lot of it right there on the ground. We'll continue to pull people out. Pakistan isn't the perfect spot, but there's a place that we continue to move people to.

Yes, we can table recommendations. We continue to push our recommendations through the lower levels of Immigration Canada, because we cannot really get the right people in Immigration to speak to us. We don't how far our recommendations are going up the chain of command, but we're absolutely key to give you anything that we can to assist.

We can recommend plans. We've done this before, so we're prepared to do that.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I was going to say, given your experience, that you have done that before, with the Syrian initiative most recently. Because of that mobilization, we were able to bring people to safety.

If the government supported that effort right now and took the same approach as they did under the Syrian refugee initiative, would you be able to do that work with Afghanistan?