Good evening. Thank you, everyone, for having me today.
My name is Corey Shelson. I served in the Canadian Armed Forces from 2002 until 2015, which included an eight-month deployment to Afghanistan in 2010 as a combat engineer troop commander.
Before I begin, I would like to first acknowledge the tragic events that are currently occurring in Ukraine and express my heartfelt sympathy for all those affected by Russia's brutal actions. In addition, I wish to express my admiration for President Zelensky and his leadership, and for the Ukrainian armed forces, who continue to defend themselves with courage and bravery in the name of freedom.
I would also like to acknowledge and express my appreciation to all of the members of the Canadian Armed Forces who served during Canada's mission in Afghanistan, including those who risked their lives to evacuate affected Afghans.
None of what occurred in Afghanistan should have come as a surprise, except the speed at which the Taliban took the country. My aim for today is simple: It's to tell you what I experienced during my involvement in the evacuation and provide this committee with a list of failures that I observed, which I hope will drive further root-cause analysis in order to derive some lessons learned for future non-combatant evacuation operations.
I would like to first list a few key dates. July 1, 2021 is when I came across a news article stating that the U.S. had withdrawn from Bagram airfield. July 5 is when I got formally involved, when an interpreter I served with, who was previously resettled for the special immigration program between 2009 and 2012, reached out asking for my assistance to help his family get to Canada.
On July 8, 2021, an open letter was penned by three previous task force commanders: generals Milner, Fraser and Thompson. That letter called for the immediate evacuation of stranded Afghans.
On July 23, 2021, then immigration minister Mendicino outlined what he described as a flexible and inclusive plan to relocate several thousand affected Afghan individuals. August 4 was when the first planeload arrived in Canada. August 15 is when the Taliban took Kabul. August 30 was when the evacuation ended.
On February 28, which is today, many, if not all of the applicants I began supporting, are still without a response. Most of them have not received a G number and still do not have a pathway to Canada.
The first issue I would like to address is our post-military campaign responsibilities. When Canada deploys troops, we must understand that our mission does not end with their return. I believe that we have damaged our credibility on the international stage by our behaviour. Remember that history cannot be rewritten and our actions are what will be remembered.
On that note, I would like to highlight that, for those interpreters who served with the Canadian Armed Forces and who were resettled between 2009 and 2012, the pathway for SIMS application did not open until December 9, 2021. I do not personally know of any who have made it to Canada.
Second, on the bureaucratic application process, providing forms that could be opened only in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and requiring that they be signed, scanned and returned, demonstrated a lack of sensitivity to the situation on the ground and placed affected individuals at undue risk. There was also a lack of sensitivity due to a lack of translation into Pashto and Dari during our initial emails that were sent out, as well as the number of email addresses that were being asked to respond to, most of which people could not spell.
Why were we even using email in the first place? How is it that we can't put together a more efficient manner to collect this information, like a portal? Our technical inabilities in a digital first world are absolutely appalling. It's also very eye-opening. I can tell you that if our government were a private business, we would be out of business.
Concerning our lack of agility, the following information I'm going to tell you was gathered through interactions with a number of individuals. I would like to ask that this be further investigated.
The first piece of information is that, when the special immigration program was announced, the IRCC had only two people to triage inbound emails. Around that same time, a call went out to internal government departments, looking for volunteers to take a contract inside the IRCC. That call went out to the CRA and Service Canada, and volunteers were screened and told they would begin any day.
Workers did not start until September, which was already after the evacuation ended. Everybody started answering phones, and it wasn't until October that some of these folks were asked to start to triage emails. They were instructed to look only at emails from August 23 onward, and it took until early November for all of the emails to be processed.
These facts are disturbing, considering the number of people who were waiting by their computer for a response from the IRCC.