Thank you so much for this question. I remember you asking the same question in the Special Committee on Afghanistan.
The fact is that we have told the Canadian public, as well as the people at the IRCC, that as previous victims of the Russian invasion in Afghanistan, we sympathize with the Ukrainian people who are fleeing the war in Ukraine. We sympathize with any refugee who is coming to Canada. At the same time, what we're asking for is fairness. What we are asking for is a lack of bias.
It may be the region, skin colour or religion that differentiates us from the Ukrainians. We're asking for the same level of compassion and the same level of generosity from the Canadian government, especially from the IRCC, toward Afghans as they have shown to previous immigrants coming from Ukraine.
One thing that I want to point out here is that the honourable Minister Sean Fraser described the Ukrainians as coming under a temporary process, which will be a two-year stay in Canada—they might be able to work or something like that—but the Afghans are coming under a permanent program, and that's why it's taking so long.
I think that's completely wrong. There's no such thing as staying in Canada temporarily. Nobody will be kicked out after two years and told, “You go back to Ukraine,” unless they voluntarily choose to. The same will apply to Afghan families. I told the minister the same thing—that after two years, all those Ukrainians will be eligible for the same kinds of permanent residency, as well as citizenship and all of the other services that the Afghan refugees and immigrants are being offered right now.
We've been waiting for seven to eight months for application numbers. We've been waiting since the fall of Kabul, which was eight months ago. As of today, around 12,000 Afghans have made it to Canada, while for the Ukrainians, that number could soon go up to close to 100,000, based on the estimation we did from the minister's own numbers that he provided to the media.
You can say that there is a lot of bias in his statement, as well as in the attitudes of the IRCC and the Government of Canada toward Afghans and other minority groups.