Afghanistan Committee on Feb. 28th, 2022

[Brandi Hansen, Director of Operations, Vector Global Solutions]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen, honourable members, for allowing me to come and speak with you this evening.

My name is Brandi Hansen. I am a director for Vector Global Solutions in Canada. We're a non-profit organization. I'm also the director of operations for Ark Salus out of the United States.

We are a group of Canadians and Americans. We're mostly comprised of pilots, active duty, intelligence sector, individuals, analysts, business administration and government liaison. We were in Afghanistan in August and rescued over 1,000 Afghans prior to the gates falling in Kabul, so we have a proof of concept for evacuations. We also rescued 53 special mission wing individuals out of Uzbekistan with the co-operation of the Uzbekistan president. They are now relocated and resettled in the United States.

Our mission is global crisis response, not just to Afghanistan but on an international level.

We specialize in airlift. Our airlift has a NATO CAGE code. With an extensive past history of performance, we can land and depart in any country in the world. The charter is small; it is 180. It is not a commercial charter. We evacuate only individuals with accepted onward travel, with a clear travel path. We have a ground team. We have a logistics team with an extensive database. We have an intelligence team and a food program in Afghanistan. We also have resettlement, as well as a biometric team.

Our focus is primarily on all categories: orphans and unaccompanied minors, women, widows, targeted groups, vulnerable minorities, enduring relations—individuals who have enduring relations to the Canadian and U.S. government—and diplomatic missions. We presently have a very large diplomatic mission, with almost the entire Afghan cabinet within our care at the moment.

We evacuate frontline humanitarian defenders. We have a con-op catalogue—“con-op” is concepts of operations or missions—for Canada alone. Our objective is to identify all obstacles and come to tangible resolutions moving forward. I'm hoping to spend my time speaking with respect to the future and what we're going to be doing moving forward.

From my understanding, our objectives are biometrics, undocumented individuals, routes, airlift, intermediary countries and funding. At this moment, we're able to offer airlifts, two flights a week, 180 individuals, with onward travel—which means this would be perhaps individuals who have an enduring relationship with the Canadian government who already have applications accepted through IRCC.

Mr. Chair, please let me know if I go over my time. I have my head down in my notes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

You have 90 seconds.

[Brandi Hansen]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My recommendations for resolutions would be biometrics via contractor or subcontractor, perhaps not an NGO that's doing the evacuations but a third party, either inside Afghanistan or perhaps on a cruise ship at the port of Karachi in Pakistan, facilitating a floating humanitarian hub where you could do biometrics and then possibly....

The law changes, also, when you're in international maritime waters, and you could then sail to Canada as well, which would be economical.

I would recommend implementing similar immigration measures to those used for the Ukraine, or new, innovative ones, as what we've been doing hasn't been overly successful.

The one successful IRCC measure was the Canadian and U.S. co-operation on the safe passage to Canada for the 5,000 refugees who were evacuated and facilitated by the U.S.A. That has been a success. It would be my recommendation for the IRCC to gain another partnership with the U.S. Department of State, to perhaps do another 5,000 or 10,000, since that was a successful measure.

Airlift transportation is something that is accessible to Canada, through us with our NATO CAGE code, DUNS number and extensive past history. Rather than moving 200 to 300 a month, we are able to move 360 per week, according to our flight plan. That's 360 individuals a week, 1,440 per month, 17,000 per year.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Ms. Hansen. That was perfect timing.

[Brandi Hansen]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

We will now go to the Women Leaders of Tomorrow and Ms. Friba Rezayee, for five minutes.

[Friba Rezayee, Founder and Executive Director, Women Leaders of Tomorrow]

Good evening, Mr. Chair. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear and speak before the Special Committee on Afghanistan today.

My name is Friba Rezayee. I was born and raised in Afghanistan. I am one of the first Afghan—

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

For health and safety reasons, the interpreter, who is doing their very best, can't interpret what the witness is saying.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

I'm going to suspend for a few seconds here again.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

I'm going to call the meeting to order right now. We'll figure out how we can manage.

I'm sorry, Ms. Rezayee. We do not mean it to be this way, but we just want to make sure that we are able to at least have questions for the other two witnesses.

I need unanimous consent from the members. Are the members in agreement?

Thank you.

[Friba Rezayee]

I have changed my headset. I have a better one. Does it work now?

[The Clerk]

Can we just have a few more words, please?

[Friba Rezayee]

I changed my headset. I have a much better headset. It's a $200 headset.

No? All right. Please go ahead.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Madam Clerk, we can go ahead with the meeting, because we have unanimous consent from the committee members.

At some point in time we'll bring it back to Ms. Rezayee.

We'll go to the members now. We can start with the first round.

Mr. Hallan, you have five minutes. Please go ahead.

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

Mr. Chair, I think I'm going to replace Mr. Hallan. He's involved in another event as well. Are you good with that, Chair?

All right. I'll just give my own personal attestation to the professor's comments, having spent a year and a half or more of my life in Afghanistan. I can speak to the complexity of the issue with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

My question is for the professor. Based on that, does it not underline the importance of why we should have tried to get as many Afghans out of the country before it fell to the Taliban?

[Dr. Julian Spencer-Churchill]

I don't mean to challenge the current policy of evacuating Afghans who co-operated with the Canadian Forces.

My point, which I've echoed for 20 years, is that the policies before that disaster happened consistently avoided Pakistan. For those of us working in Pakistan, it looked like it was policy-driven. I've been to many conferences once where I have raised the issue, and I have not been reinvited, so I can only assume there's some sort of conspiracy.

My interpretation is that on the military side, the Canadian Forces largely deferred to their American counterparts, who held a pretty strong line on not including Pakistan for a variety of reasons.

For the aid community, I just assumed that they didn't want to complicate the process. As long as they were being subsidized by Canadian government help, they were satisfied with not having to address the Pakistan issue.

Certainly efforts to help those in Afghanistan now are not affected by whatever Pakistan thinks.

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

All right. Thank you for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Mr. Spencer-Churchill, can you bring your microphone a bit closer to your lips? Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Ruff.

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

Thanks, Chair. My next question will be for Ms. Hansen.

Can you further elaborate on the importance and maybe on your own understanding...? It's too bad the other witness couldn't testify, because one of my main concerns is around the women, children and visible minorities who are being persecuted under the Taliban and the importance of getting these refugees or these Afghans out of Afghanistan.

A concern I have under our current philosophy is that we're going to fill up the numbers that the government has committed to with people who have already safely gotten out of Afghanistan. They are maybe still in a third country, which isn't perfect, but my real concern is over those in Afghanistan.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Go ahead, Ms. Hansen.

[Brandi Hansen]

My response at this time, to be entirely candid, is that with what we do we don't have a clear path as to how to get them out. The humanitarian, the vulnerable individuals and the people at risk are some of the most difficult at this time to be getting out of Afghanistan. A lot of them don't have documents, and they don't have an enduring relationship with the Canadian government. The agreement that Canada has with the United States with respect to individuals being evacuated and creating a path, with the Department of State writing those referrals, would certainly be something I could see as a tangible solution.

My understanding is that not all of these individuals have gone through the Department of State right away. They aren't in the U.S., and the U.S. isn't just sending them to Canada. These are individuals who are still getting their families out of Afghanistan; they're individuals over in Turkey or intermediary countries, a.k.a. lily pad countries. It's not that it's just for people who are at some sort of intermediary country and might be safe for the moment. I believe that this 5,000 agreement, which I believe is full at this time, which was specific to humanitarian and vulnerable individuals and targeted groups and minorities, is the best ticket for them to get out of Afghanistan. Perhaps we can hardwire it to make it more geared to getting individuals out of Afghanistan right now, rather than pulling them from intermediary countries.

I hope I answered your question.

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

Yes, that's—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ruff. I appreciate that.

We'll go to Madam Zahid for five minutes, please.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I will be splitting my time with MP Sidhu.

I wanted to ask a question to Ms. Rezayee, so if she could send us some information on that by written submission it would be really great. She has been a passionate advocate of women's and girls' education, as well as gender equality. I would like to have her input on what Canada can do to make sure the girls in Afghanistan have access to education and other humanitarian aid. If she can't respond now due to interpretation issues, if she could send us some information on that through a written submission, that would be great.

My next question is for Professor—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Are the other members okay with this written submission?

Madam Kwan.