Thank you, Mr. Chair.
On the documents required to leave, the SIMs process was quite straightforward in terms of documentation. We realized early in the game that we needed to come up with a mechanism. It was actually IRCC that came up with a mechanism called the “single journey travel document”. That was something that allowed people to get out of the country relatively quickly without a whole lot of core documentation—like a passport. We had people with children that had been born two weeks before, and they obviously didn't have a national identity card or a passport.
The issue we found in processing people at the airport very early in the game was that the Afghan government started barring people who did not have passports or their Afghan tazkiras—national identity cards—on the planes. In fact, we had one flight that actually was forced to off-load about 70 passengers, I think, because there was one person on the plane who did not have a passport in their hand.
When I made interventions with their Office of the National Security Advisor, as well as their Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I asked for special exemptions and waivers. We were given one for one flight and were told that after that, “never again”. I discussed the issue with my colleagues at other embassies—the British embassy and the American embassy—and with the Dutch and the Danes, for example, and they all had the same problem. They were having difficulty getting people out because they could not get people the documentation to get on the flights to leave the country.
In the end, it came down to a question of a decision at the senior policy level. The president of the country did not want Afghans leaving because he felt that there would be a brain drain, and we retorted that we needed to have part of the brain come with us so that they could come back and build the country later on.