Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 8th, 2023

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Thank you.

Madam Chair, I will cede my time to Ms. Rempel Garner.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

You have one minute and 15 seconds.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2):

(a) the committee extend the total number of meetings currently allocated to the current study regarding the government's response to the final report of the Special Committee on Afghanistan by a minimum of three meetings, to be held prior to March 31, 2023; and

( b) Senator Marilou McPhedran, MP Marc Garneau, Minister Harjit Sajjan and Minister Marco Mendicino be invited to appear separately before the committee prior to March 31, 2023, for two hours each, to discuss matters related to the current study; and

(c) Dr. Lauryn Oates, of the Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan group, be invited to appear individually before committee prior to March 31, 2023, for one hour, to discuss matters related to the current study; and

(d) summonses do issue for the appearances of former minister for women and gender equality, Maryam Monsef; Laura Robinson; and George Young to appear separately, for two hours each, at dates and times to be fixed by the chair but no later than March 31, 2023, to discuss matters related to the current study; and

(e) summonses do issue for the appearances of senior departmental officials from the Department of National Defence to appear before the committee, at a date and time to be fixed by the chair but no later than March 31, 2023, to discuss matters related to the current study.

I have sent this motion to the clerk in both official languages. This motion is in scope, as it relates to the current matter that the committee is studying.

I will begin my rationale for this motion by stating that I am certain Senator McPhedran acted from a place of good intent in issuing these facilitation letters.

I ask my colleagues to listen to my rationale carefully. I'm not moving this out of political motivation, but out of a very human face that I have been acquainted with for over a year now. I believe we should have rescued more Afghans than the government did.

I want to explain to this committee why I believe that this motion should pass, by sharing the story of my constituents. The letters that were issued by Senator McPhedran put the family of one of my constituents in danger and later stymied their efforts to come to Canada. I think it's important to put their case on the record. I will not be disclosing their identity, due to safety and privacy concerns. I am sharing information that I have previously received permission to disclose from them.

On August 23, 2021, a constituent contacted my office on behalf of her cousin and his family of nine, who are Afghan nationals. She relayed to my office that her cousin was a member of an NGO that was supported by the Canadian government. He was able to provide IRCC with contribution agreements between the NGO and the Canadian government that substantiated a working relationship. She explained to my office that her cousin and his family had been trying to flee Afghanistan to Canada because their lives were at risk due to their work on democracy, equality and freedom of speech in partnership with the Government of Canada. They were being threatened by the Taliban.

My constituent contacted my office because of confusion as to why her family wasn't being assisted in resettling to Canada and issues with communication with IRCC and GAC officials. She requested that we inquire about these issues and assist in providing closure to her case.

Upon this request for assistance from my office, we asked for my constituent's cousin—who I'll refer to as Mr. X—to consent to our inquiring about his status. We were provided with consent forms, third party authorization and documentation of the applicant's connection to the Canadian government.

When my constituent began communicating with my office, she sent us an email that Mr. X said he received from the IRCC department in Islamabad on July 27, 2021, suggesting that he apply for a temporary public policy to resettle Afghans to Canada. He provided my office with the emails he said that he sent to IRCC to apply for this measure within the time constraints outlined therein. This application was submitted to the IRCC department in Islamabad by Mr. X on July 29, 2021, as per instructions he said he received in the above-referenced email from department officials.

My constituent was also able to provide evidence that he had in fact provided services to Canada. He was in possession of a Government of Canada service contract with an NGO he was affiliated with, and documentation—apparently issued from that NGO—of his relationship to the work that was the subject of that contract. They were also able to provide evidence of the Government of Canada officials who were working with them.

In August 2021, Mr. X's family was also corresponding directly with Senator Marilou McPhedran on Mr. X and his family's potential passage from Afghanistan to Canada.

My constituent made my office aware of this correspondence with the senator after the federal election on October 15, 2021. She told my office that Senator McPhedran and her office had directly provided Mr. X with letters of facilitation, which stated that a visa had been granted to certain members of Mr. X's family and could facilitate their passage to Canada.

Until this point, my office was acting on the assumption that Mr. X's family had received some kind of official documentation directly from Canadian government officials in IRCC or GAC. These documents, which include the Government of Canada logo and a seal bearing the appearance of a Government of Canada department, appear to be sent to Mr. X and his family via email by the senator and her office on August 26, 2021. The email also suggested that the family present themselves at the Hamid Karzai International Airport, specifically at Baron Gate, and not discuss with anyone that they had received this correspondence.

My constituent told my office that upon receiving these documents, and based on advice contained in the above-referenced email from Senator McPhedran and her office, Mr. X's family attempted to reach the Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 26, 2021, but were faced with extremely unsafe conditions and were forced to turn back.

She also expressed to my office that having been in receipt of these documents, and having applied for the temporary public policy to resettle Afghans that was outlined in the email from IRCC Islamabad, my constituent told my office that she and her family believed they were able to gain passage to Canada, but were unclear as to why they were unable to get assistance to leave.

Between August 2021 and June 2022, my office has corresponded with GAC and IRCC over 30 times through email and telephone calls to determine the status of Mr. X's family resettlement status. Throughout, we continued to update IRCC and GAC on Mr. X's family situation in Afghanistan, which they expressed had significantly deteriorated and had included Taliban interviews and harassment.

My correspondence with my constituent began during the middle of a federal election, when the government was in caretaker mode and there was little clarity on what processes or documentation the government was using to evacuate persons. Given these roadblocks, and upon receipt of this correspondence, my office began trying to understand why Mr. X's family resettlement process was delayed, given the efforts they had already undertaken and the documentation in their possession.

After multiple inquiries, IRCC was not able to confirm with my office that it was in receipt of the application submitted by Mr. X on July 29, 2021, for the temporary public policy to resettle Afghans, even when presented with documentation my constituent forwarded to my office, corroborating her family's claim that an application was submitted within the time constraints allowed. IRCC would not confirm that such a referral was made to Mr. X in late July 2021, even after IRCC was provided with documentation that seems to corroborate the same.

While the documentation provided to my office seemed legitimate, and corroborated that Mr. X's family actually applied in July 2021 for this temporary public policy, IRCC never acknowledged it was in receipt of this application, or that it had taken any action on it.

Subsequent to Mr. X's application to the measure outlined in that email, the government announced an additional immigration program to resettle Afghans. To me, there seemed to have been a lack of coordination between the temporary public policy contained in the email that Mr. X initially responded to from IRCC Islamabad and this new program, which in turn seemed to have led to much confusion in Mr. X's family. They thought they were already engaged in one valid application stream for assistance in evacuating to Canada, and they made assumptions that their application was still in process. My office certainly didn't hear otherwise for some time.

The lack of resources for Afghan evacuation and direction in IRCC at the time of the initial application to the temporary public policy measure, coupled with the fact that the government was in caretaker mode during a federal election, is a matter of public record.

After some time of trying to ascertain the status of Mr. X's original application, an IRCC official gave advice on January 18, 2022, months later, for the family to apply again, this time to the special immigration measures program for Afghans, and with a service provision relationship with Canada. They did so on February 5, 2022.

Several months later, on May 27, 2022, they received a decision on this application. They were informed by IRCC that while Mr. X and his family may have been eligible for the special program, IRCC was not moving forward with their application, citing program space constraints.

I have to wonder if they had known that these documents were inauthentic, and if they could have actually made it into the country under this program.

Additionally, during these interactions with GAC and IRCC, my office was never able to substantiate the official status of the so-called letters of facilitation and instructions Mr. X's family had received on August 26, 2021, from Senator McPhedran and her office. My office had begun this process by trying to understand why some of Mr. X's family had been granted documentation, but not others.

Again, when my constituent began corresponding with my office, they were operating under the assumption that they were in possession of some sort of official documentation issued in the haste and chaos of the Government of Canada's efforts to evacuate certain persons during the fall of the country.

Many of the traditional abilities that my office would normally use to verify information in casework weren't readily available in this instance, given the opacity of government processes for evacuating Afghanistan and the fact that Canada was in the middle of a federal election and the government was in caretaker mode.

My office became aware only in October 2021, after the federal election had concluded, that Mr. X's family had obtained this documentation directly from the senator and her office as opposed to direct correspondence with GAC or IRCC officials. This caused a significant amount of confusion for my office as, after initial discussions with my constituent, our correspondence with GAC and IRCC was to try to understand why only a few of Mr. X's family had been issued documentation to travel, as opposed to all of them.

Since discovering that Mr. X's family had received these letters from the senator and her office, we went back and forth with GAC and IRCC, trying to ascertain their official status.

After speaking to multiple officials with IRCC and GAC for months, no officials confirmed to my office that the documents and instructions sent to Mr. X by Senator McPhedran and her office were actually issued by any official in any department of the Government of Canada.

After Mr. X's reapplication to the special settlement program was formally declined, citing space constraints, in May 2022, I spoke directly with Senator McPhedran in early June 2022. This was the first and only time I have communicated with the senator regarding this matter.

During this call, she verbally confirmed that she had indeed corresponded with Mr. X. I did not ask her where she had obtained the documents that she and her office sent to Mr. X during this call, because my office had not received a definitive answer from IRCC or GAC on the status of the documents. Typically, we get clear answers on these situations. We assume the delay in getting confirmation was that it had been unclear to my office what processes and documentation the Canadian government was consistently using, if any, to facilitate departures during the chaos of the evacuation that occurred in August 2021.

I had reached out to see if there was something I had missed in the file and to reaffirm the validity of my constituent's claim. Never once did I think that a sitting parliamentarian would have issued inauthentic documentation.

I had no reason for concern until, subsequent to my call with Senator McPhedran, I was made aware of an article published in the Edmonton Journal, asserting that an unnamed Canadian senator had been directly issuing documentation to Afghan nationals from their office, and that formal diligence may not have been undertaken to ascertain the veracity of claims of some persons for whom these letters had been issued.

As such, my office redoubled efforts to press IRCC and GAC to determine the actual origins of documents sent to my constituent's family, as they expressed they had material influence on Mr. X's family's efforts to leave Afghanistan. When I received no response and had no further recourse, I wrote a letter outlining the situation to Minister Fraser. I received a response from Minister Fraser to my letter of July 7 on July 27, which outlined that he had undertaken an investigation, that the documents were deemed to be inauthentic and he had referred the matter to authorities.

Subsequent to this response, in September 2022, The Globe and Mail published an article entitled “Canadian senator sent documents to Afghan family that weren’t authentic, Ottawa says”, which outlined allegations that Senator Marilou McPhedran had issued inauthentic travel documents to Afghan nationals.

Last week, on Thursday, February 2, Senator McPhedran rose in the Senate and delivered a speech. She alleged that, while she did in fact issue what she referred to as visa facilitation letters to certain Afghan nationals, she did so in coordination with the former minister for women and gender equality, Maryam Monsef, a consultant and “a small circle of high officials”, including unnamed persons in other nations.

In this speech, Senator McPhedran also alleged that hundreds of potentially inauthentic letters may have been issued that had allegedly been provided by template documentation that bore the appearance of official Canadian documentation by George Young, then chief of staff to the then minister of Defence, Harjit Sajjan. Senator McPhedran made these allegations under the cone of parliamentary privilege afforded to her in the Senate, and none of these allegations have yet been proven.

A subsequent article was published on February 3, 2023, by the Toronto Star, entitled “A Canadian senator helped save Afghan women. The immigration department called police on her”. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada stated, “In order to facilitate the evacuation of vulnerable Afghans, the Government of Canada sent letters directly to Afghan nationals who were eligible to come to Canada in order to help them clear checkpoints on the way to and at the airport in Kabul. IRCC did not authorize any third party to issue these facilitation letters on [their] behalf.”

Therefore, we have a problem, colleagues. The public assertion by IRCC that it did not authorize anyone, including persons named above, to issue travel documentation for Afghan nationals raises numerous questions that our committee should be considering. This situation is extremely concerning and involves very serious allegations.

It raises questions about whether, among unknown others, a Canadian parliamentarian, a consultant she retained using tax dollars, a sitting cabinet minister and the chief of staff to the Minister of Defence purposely issued inauthentic documents to Afghan nationals, which may have resulted in their evacuation or, in other cases, consequences resulting from being led to think that they were in the possession of official documents, when, in fact, they were not, as was the case with my constituents.

It raises questions about who within the government knew about this issue, when, and what, if any, remedy has been taken yet.

It also raises questions about why a workaround, inauthentic process may have been used by senior persons in the government to evacuate Afghan nationals, as opposed to official processes.

It also raises questions why this process wasn't made public or wasn't made available to more parliamentarians.

It also raises questions about the integrity of the government selection process for Afghans with connections to Canada and the impact the issuance of inauthentic documents would have had on an untold number of Afghans who wished to come to Canada, should have come to Canada, but were not able to.

It raises questions about queue jumping, identity verification and, most importantly, the equity of our immigration selection process.

The 2021 fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban created a dire humanitarian crisis that precipitated an immediate response, even though the government had called a general election. I myself had the experience of watching my Afghan veteran husband see this news and knowing we were in a position where we could respond.

Every member of our committee has members of their community who are affected by this crisis. Many members work to address devastating cases of family members who were left behind and still lived in hiding under constant threat from the Taliban while struggling with a government in an election-necessitated caretaker mode.

We all desperately want these persons to be afforded a safe haven in Canada, but none of us issued fake visas. Parliamentary figures, be they members of Parliament or senators, are not legally allowed to independently make these decisions. They are not part of the executive branch of government unless they hold an active appointment to the same. Similarly, ministers or their staff do not all hold the same powers and authorities. As such, these persons do not necessarily have the automatic power or authority by virtue of their own legislative office to do things like issue visas or bind the government to action on their behalf. This is true no matter how well intentioned the person is, as I'm sure Senator McPhedran was, or how dire the circumstances are.

Doing otherwise could have massive negative implications, including circumventing the necessary non-political, arm's-length nature of things like Canada's immigration systems, which keep our processes safe for everyone, impartial and fair. These things can and should only be done by appropriately empowered officials, by the executive branch of the Canadian government or by officially legislated and regulated processes.

This doesn't mean the government shouldn't be held to account when the system fails. In fact, the role of parliamentarians in these situations is to inquire about processes and to hold the government to account to ensure processes are properly functioning, especially during times of crisis. This is what Senator McPhedran and then cabinet minister Maryam Monsef should have used their powers to do. If these processes aren't working, it's Parliament's role to further hold the government to account and press for change.

It's not our role to do things we are not duly authorized to do. It's not our role to use back channels through the government to do things like this. In fact, the government has a responsibility to prevent such back channels from existing. This brings me to the substance of the motion, and I will close.

Given the potential significant consequences and implications of allegations outlined within Senator McPhedran's speech and in multiple media articles, I believe it is of urgent importance to explore the extent and veracity of these claims and to ensure that the appropriate remedy, if necessary, is taken by the government.

My constituent, I found out today coincidentally, had a happy outcome. The American government helped him. Even though he had more of a connection to Canada, he is now in the United States. I wish I could have helped him. I wish I could have written a letter off the corner of my desk instead of spending a year spinning my wheels with government officials who weren't telling me what was going on while my constituent was under attack from the Taliban. That's what we're dealing with here. This isn't a joke.

Why are summonses necessary? There are summonses in this motion. This government has taken Parliament to court over a parliamentary order to issue documents. I have little faith that these types of officials will appear before this committee on a matter of this seriousness without a summons. That is why I included Department of Defence officials on a summons, because they cancelled a meeting that was supposed to happen in front of this committee on Monday after this story broke. Why all of these officials? These are the officials that Senator McPhedran has levelled allegations against in the Senate, and I would like to give them an opportunity to either clear their name or explain why they chose to engage in a workaround inauthentic process, instead of pressing for change as the position that they hold affords them.

The bottom line here is we can change the system. That is what each of us can do. I know each of us tried to bring people into the country by trying to change the system. I know that even Liberal colleagues were likely pressing the government in the middle of an election to do better. I know that. This is not a partisan issue. I know that everybody was well intentioned here, but at the end of the day, the rules were broken and it hurt people. It hurt a lot of people, and it affected the integrity of our immigration process.

I think we need to bring more people here. I think the government shouldn't have gone to an election without a plan to deal with this.

We need to examine what happened here as Parliament. This is why this committee exists. We need to know how the system failed, why this was allowed to happen and what happened, so that we can recommend recourse to the government and so that the government can effect change.

For the sake of any outstanding casework that you have with Afghan nationals, for the sake of Afghan nationals who have not received a response from IRCC, we need to understand why the best bet for somebody to get into Canada was to have a parliamentarian, a senator, issue a fake visa to them off the corner of their desk.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

Ms. Lalonde.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

With all due respect for my opposition colleague, I am extremely disappointed and saddened. We worked very hard to have the minister and four senior officials from the department to be here today, and I know that several of you had prepared questions. That's what we had agreed on.

Yet again, things got derailed on an important topic. It is indeed important to continue to discuss things and that's exactly what we had intended to do today.

Madam Chair, I would ask to adjourn this debate.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Ms. Lalonde has requested to adjourn the debate. It's a non-debatable motion. We will have a vote.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 7; nays 4)

The debate is adjourned.

Ms. Kwan.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

I know we're out of time, because I'm told we lose this room at 6:38. However, that said, I note that I and my colleague Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe lost our opportunity for a second round of questions to the officials. I would like to submit written questions, through you, Madam Chair, to the officials, so those questions can be answered.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Would the officials be okay to do this?

[Christiane Fox]

Yes, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

I would like to take this opportunity, on behalf of all the members, to thank the officials for appearing before the committee.

Thank you for all the work you do on behalf of Canadians. I know it's not an easy file.

With that, the meeting is adjourned.