Evidence of meeting #5 for Afghanistan in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pakistan.
A video is available from Parliament.
7:30 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you.
I'm going to move on to Mr. Lavery because I need to hear from all the witnesses, please.
7:30 p.m.
As an Individual
I'll comment on the very beginning.
Back in July, we reached out to all the key people in the Canadian embassy, the security department and their program managers. We tried reaching out to the chargé d'affaires—the deputy. We sent a message off to them and the ambassador. The common response, especially when we were in the early stages, was that they were too busy, that they didn't really have time for us and that type of thing.
We kept on coming back at them. We utilized our team in Canada to try to get influence and to try to get the spark going. It just seemed like...maybe they were overwhelmed or maybe they were preoccupied with other issues, but the desire and the will to try to engage at that stage.... They pushed us aside.
That was, I guess, one of the pivotal points for us. It was the Canadian embassy's lack of engagement at that point in time, not only with me on the ground, but with our senior personnel back with the team in Canada.
That's all I would pass on at this stage.
7:30 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you.
The reference to Ukraine was raised. The call for visa-free is going to be essential for Ukraine, and the government hasn't acted on that yet. I guess, similarly in this instance, dealing with the biometrics issue and waiving those documentations is key so that people can get out.
In terms of this, is your number one call for the government to waive the biometrics or engage with NGOs on the ground to get this work done to get people to safety?
Maybe we'll go to Mr. Lavery and then Ms. Long.
7:30 p.m.
As an Individual
Yes, very quickly, you'd want to do both: engage with the talent on the ground and also have a waiver in place, but make sure you have the capability through that reliable partner on the ground.
Maybe I can turn it over to Eleanor or Wendy.
7:30 p.m.
Deputy Executive Director, Aman Lara
Our number one priority at Aman Lara is most certainly a way to confirm identity in Afghanistan. We understand that the Government of Canada has a responsibility to confirm identity. I want to make it clear that there sometimes is a perception that Canada requires a passport. Canada does not require a passport. The Afghan passport is required for Afghans who are leaving Afghanistan to cross the Pakistani border. That's not a requirement of the Government of Canada. Yes, we think we can deliver that requirement of the Government of Afghanistan, either directly or indirectly, to support them in that confirmation of identity piece.
7:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Thank you very much. That was seven minutes. The time is up.
On behalf of the members of Parliament and of this committee, I want to thank you, Ms. Long, Ms. Taylor, Mr. Macdonald and Mr. Lavery, for the pertinent information and knowledge you brought to this committee. All the best to all of you. You can now log off.
We'll suspend while we wait for the next panel's members to get on board.
7:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
I call the meeting to order.
I thank the interpreters for being so generous in this difficult situation with the sound.
On behalf of the committee I would like to welcome both the witnesses. As individuals we have Mr. Corey Shelson and Mr. Stephen Peddle.
You have five minutes each. I would like one of you to go first, whoever wants to, otherwise I'll let Mr. Peddle go for five minutes.
7:35 p.m.
Stephen Peddle As an Individual
Thank you, once again, for inviting me here this evening. I'm a retired member of the Canadian Armed Forces. I retired as a senior intelligence officer with the rank of major. I deployed to Afghanistan, for the first time to Kandahar in 2007, and then again with Joint Task Force 2 in 2012 with Operation Attention.
During the initial tour, I had the pleasure of being a member of the OMLT team under, at that point in time, Colonel Wayne Eyre, now General Eyre.
I was embedded with a kandak of approximately 500 Afghans. It was during that time that I was introduced to Afghan interpreters. Being an S3 and S2 within a kandak—that is an operations officer and an Afghan intelligence officer—it was very important for me to be able to communicate with the Afghan officers, the Afghan troops and the Afghan citizens we were interacting with out in the battle space.
It was during that mission that I befriended a guy named Sangeen, who is still in my life today. He's the person who contacted me last summer to help his family, who were in dire need of help due to the unfolding events in Afghanistan. His family in particular were also quite involved with helping Canada, as his brother was also an interpreter, who went on afterwards to work for ATCO and KBR. His father was not an interpreter, but he was a senior officer with the Afghan National Army. He was a colonel, so again, another high-profile potential target for the Taliban.
For that reason, Sangeen reached out to me to assist his family in getting out of Afghanistan. That's when I became involved in this committee and with the Government of Canada's response at that time to get the Afghans out before, of course, things folded at the end of the summer of 2021.
During that time, I had numerous dealings with the IRCC. I had dealings with the SJS within the Canadian Armed Forces for vetting Afghan interpreters. I also had dealings with the embassy.
I took a front-seat approach to assisting with some of the paperwork that these Afghan families were trying to fill out, trying to give them clarity when they were on the ground as to the paperwork requirements for getting on those planes, eventually, and coming to Canada.
At the time, there was quite a bit of conflicting information. I know it was a very chaotic time in Afghanistan in July and August 2021. I witnessed it personally, as these folks were asking me to intervene and contact various members of our government just to get clarity on the requirements they needed to fulfill in order to move through the vetting process and immigrate to Canada.
Just to clarify, Sangeen came to Canada 10 years earlier, in 2012. It was in February 2012, under that special Afghan interpreter relocation program that was offered, I believe, between 2009 and 2012. I could be wrong on those dates, but I know he came in February 2012. He has been in Canada for 10 years. I have had dealings with him and personal contact over the past decade since he's come to Canada.
7:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Thank you, Mr. Peddle.
We'll now go to Mr. Shelson for five minutes.
7:40 p.m.
Corey Shelson As an Individual
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.
7:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Thank you very much, Mr. Shelson. Your time is up.
We will now proceed to the round of questions.
The first person to go—I'm sorry, but somehow there is an echo—is Ms. Findlay, please, for six minutes.
7:45 p.m.
Conservative
Kerry-Lynne Findlay Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank both witnesses immensely for your service, your deployment in Afghanistan and your service overall.
Stephen, I know you. I congratulate you as well on the honour of being invested in the Order of St. George.
This first question is for you, Corey, if I may call you that. Are you aware of any flights that left that should have been full and that were not full?
7:50 p.m.
As an Individual
I can comment on the flight that arrived on August 4. My understanding from our source is that approximately 40 individuals got off that plane, and my understanding is that the plane was basically filled with embassy staff, families and some key staff who were working for the embassy.
I found it interesting that then minister Mendicino was waiting on the tarmac to greet these folks and then spinning the media to make it seem like that was an evacuation flight, when I do not believe that it was an evacuation flight. You have to remember that a C-17 holds 188 people. To put 40 people on a plane during an evacuation that had already been announced is absolutely disgusting.
7:50 p.m.
Conservative
Kerry-Lynne Findlay Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Do you have any thoughts as to why that happened that way?
7:50 p.m.
As an Individual
Well, I'm going to hazard a guess that it had to do with an application process that was simply too bureaucratic and too slow, and they probably didn't have any other applicants that had approved applications at that point.
7:50 p.m.
Conservative
Kerry-Lynne Findlay Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Major Peddle, you've talked about your relationship with the interpreters, and we've heard testimony in this committee that some of the allies who were helping—Afghan allies—weren't there just to help with language but sometimes with culture and navigating generally in a strange environment. Can you give us a little more detail on what you went through to bring those people whom you helped out of Afghanistan?
7:50 p.m.
Liberal
7:50 p.m.
As an Individual
Thank you very much. My apologies once again. I'm used to my home office, with the technology there.
My initial take on everything was, as previously mentioned, the complication of the paperwork and the format in which it had to be done. These folks, who didn't have Internet access, were in provinces outside of Kabul. To get Internet access, they were going to Internet cafés—which at that point, no doubt, had Taliban or sympathizers—to fill out paperwork articulating how they helped Canada join the war against the Taliban, so that they could eventually get their immigration approved and get on those planes.
One thing I was shocked and appalled by was the conflicting details given to the interpreters and their families. One was about medical screenings that had to be done before biometrics were collected. The directions they were given made no sense at all. For example, they were told they had to fill out a special medical screening form and have it done at a German hospital prior to being able to move on with the process. The email I have regarding that particular thing was from August 6. The German hospital had told them it would be six weeks to get in, if ever. I intervened and asked why medical screenings were even being done at that point in time in order to carry forward with the biometrics collection and vetting, at which point I got conflicting details from staff at the IRCC.
I involved MP Michael Cooper, here in Alberta, to advocate on my behalf as well. At the end of the day, the IRCC came back a few days later and said it was a mistake on its end. These screenings were not required at a German hospital in Kabul. The paperwork could, in fact, proceed as it should have days or weeks earlier.
When, eventually, they got through that screening process and were making their way on their own to Kabul for evacuation, they had little or no detail as to what was going to happen next, when the planes were leaving and how to get on those planes. I received quite a few emails over those days and weeks from about 13 of Sangeen's family members who were moving themselves across Afghanistan, trying to navigate through Taliban checkpoints to get to Kabul. Then, once in Kabul, there wasn't clear, concise direction given as to what would happen next and how to get on those planes.
7:55 p.m.
Conservative
Kerry-Lynne Findlay Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Stephen, I have only so much time and I want to ask, were you satisfied with the help from the Canadian government to get these people out, or did you have to go elsewhere to get help to do it?
7:55 p.m.
As an Individual
I was absolutely not satisfied with the help we got from the Canadian government. I ended up reaching out to other people on the ground, Afghans Sangeen had known and with whom I had worked in some capacity in my tours, to assist in telling them where it was safe to navigate across the country and where not to go, to the best of my ability. That was, at best, not even reliable information, but it was better some than none.
The whole paperwork process that was outlined confused me, as a federal employee of 28 years and a senior officer in the CAF, so I could only imagine what these Afghans were going through, with their lives on the line, to get this paperwork done to get out of the war zone, having known that they helped Canada for two decades and they would have targets on their heads being, again—
7:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Thank you very much, Ms. Findlay, for your questions.
Now we will move to Ms. Damoff for six minutes, please.