Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Just to be clear, this motion was passed by the committee on October 7. Since that time the committee has had 12 meetings. One would assume that since the motion had passed we would be inviting these ministers to come to the committee.
What are we talking about? We're talking about Afghanistan—the report that was done by the Special Committee on Afghanistan. We're talking about the 37 recommendations that committee had made to the government, and their response to it.
Meanwhile, we have Afghans who are being hunted down by the Taliban. Their lives are in grave danger for the simple reason that they helped Canada with its missions.
Meanwhile we have a third country, Pakistan, which has issued an enforcement for people who are there without a visa or with an expiring visa. They will be jailed or sent back to Afghanistan.
I have information that has been provided to me that the police in Pakistan have raided a hotel where they generally know that some of the Afghans have been staying, waiting for the processing of their application to get them to safety.
The situation is very real. Some people have already lost their lives, by the way. Some of the family members have not had any contact with what's happened with these individuals. We're talking about a gravely serious and urgent situation.
The committee passed the motion to ask for four ministers—the Minister of National Defence, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General and, of course, the Minister of Immigration—to come before the committee for two hours each. That includes officials. So far we have had none. The only minister who has given a positive response is the Minister of Immigration. He offered to come before the committee, but that happened to be at the time when we needed to do the supplementary estimates as well, and we needed to deal with them in time.
Therefore, we deferred that time, so I'll give credit and recognition to the Minister of Immigration, but where the heck are the other ministers? Why can't they make their schedule available? How many meetings do we need to offer them? I get it that in this new session we have now offered them four meetings—the 6th, 8th, 13th and 15th. Not one of them is available, with the exception of the Minister of Immigration.
I thought the Afghan file was a whole-of-government operation. The recommendations involve all these ministers. The Afghanistan committee no longer exists, so this is the only place we can engage in this dialogue to see where the government's at and see what's happening and what other action needs to be taken to bring people to safety. We owe these individuals this much.
I don't accept the idea that the ministers are not available. They are busy people. Well, we're all busy people, but let me say this: Most urgently the people who are being hunted down are people who are waiting, and what are they busy with? They're trying not to get killed.
Let's get on with it. I don't accept it. I want to know from the clerk, Madam Chair, through you, how many times we invited each of those ministers to come before the committee before the holiday break, since October 7, when the motion was passed? How many times have they rejected or said that they were too busy, that they couldn't come? What do we need to do to make sure they come?