Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 22nd, 2023

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting. The time is up for Mr. Chong.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Madam Chair,—

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

I challenge your ruling on the last—

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

—I haven't finished. I've been interrupted twice, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

No, I stopped the clock at that time.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I understand that, but I want to ask the minister the question. I was interrupted twice, which interrupted my train of thought, so I'd like to finish asking the question.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

The time is up for Mr. Chong. The minister is only here for one hour. We will end this round of questioning with Ms. Kayabaga.

Ms. Kayabaga, you will have five minutes for your round of questioning. Please begin, and then this panel will end.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good afternoon, Minister. Thank you for being here today.

I am going to focus my questions on your role as Minister of Foreign Affairs. One of the things your mandate letter refers to is the work you can do with the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. What is your role, exactly? What have you done with the minister in this regard since you were appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs?

[Mélanie Joly, Liberal, Ahuntsic-Cartierville, QC]

When I was appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs in October 2021, I quickly adopted the objective of working with the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship to find ways of bringing more Afghans to Canada.

However, because we do not have diplomatic representation in Afghanistan, and so we have no ambassador in Kabul, and because few of our allies still had representatives in Afghanistan, I wanted to work with other countries that were receiving Afghan refugees and potentially had ties with Canada. That is why we have worked with Pakistan. In the first weeks of my mandate, I spoke to representatives of Pakistan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to find ways of bringing Afghans to Canada and ultimately reaching the target of admitting 40,000 refugees that we, as the government, had set.

Our colleague, Mr. El‑Khoury, asked a very good question earlier. He asked what the difference was between Syria and Afghanistan. When we worked with Syria, we also worked with the UN, which had refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. The UN was able to select refugees and implement measures to ensure a proper security assessment for each of the refugees. We were not able to work that way in the case of the Afghans, because the refugee camps were organized differently. That is one of the logistical problems that my colleague Minister Fraser faced, as did I, in fact.

That is also why I have worked with the Americans, who had a number of Afghans on their various military bases, and this enabled us to bring some of them here. Every week, every month, we continue to receive Afghan refugees from various countries with which I have been in contact since I took office in 2021.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you for that answer.

The Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, which I have worked with closely, is from my riding. I've been watching—and I'm sure many people across the country have been seeing—your leadership in foreign policy and feminist policy with the G7 leaders.

This group of women is really focused on working to support Afghan girls in continuing their education. They have used every tool possible to support women in Afghanistan. They're talking about using technology to make sure that girls continue to educate themselves in a safe way. They're talking about creating spaces where Afghan women can continue to sort of digest what the Taliban regime has done to them.

In your conversations with other foreign affairs ministers, are you able to talk about some of the innovative ways we can continue to support Afghan women and girls who need to continue to have their education? Also, as we continue to see the erasure of women in Afghanistan, what kinds of conversations are you having with your counterparts on this specific subject?

[Mélanie Joly, Liberal, Ahuntsic-Cartierville, QC]

I've had many conversations with my counterparts, particularly my German counterpart, on finding ways to help the schooling of girls and impose conditions on our aid. We're also working with the EU on a better-coordinated approach when it comes to humanitarian assistance. That's supported, obviously, by Minister Sajjan.

Right now, at the end of the day, the best way for Canada to provide help right now is through Bill C-41. At the same time, the best way is making sure we work with the UN. Nobody has asked me a question on this, and I'm surprised: What is shocking about humanitarian aid in Afghanistan is the fact that women who are part of international NGOs cannot work there. We have pushed back heavily on this and will continue to do so—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting. Your time is up, Ms. Kayabaga.

With that, our first panel comes to an end. On behalf of all the members of this committee, Minister, I want to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule.

I will suspend the meeting for two or three minutes so that we can allow one additional member to take a seat.

The meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I call the meeting to order.

We have the officials with us for the next 50 minutes. In addition to the officials from the previous panel, we are joined by Christopher Gibbins, executive director, Afghanistan-Pakistan.

Welcome, Mr. Gibbins.

We will go straight to our rounds of questions, beginning with MP Chong.

MP Chong, you will have six minutes. Please begin.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I hope I won't be interrupted this time. Having been here 19 years, I don't interrupt other members when they are using their time to intervene. My experience on committee has been that there has often been a wide latitude given to members questioning ministers in front of a committee, and I hope I will be accorded the same courtesy in the future.

I want to go back to this question I was asking the minister about Afghanistan. I believe, and I think many people who follow this file believe, that the way Canada left Afghanistan in August 2021 was a disaster that will harm our interests for years to come. To be fair, the way the western alliance, our allies, left Afghanistan was part of that disaster. They too failed to leave Afghanistan in a way that upheld our values and our interests.

I think we did particularly poorly in leaving Afghanistan. I highlighted, when the minister was in front of the committee, the testimony we heard at the Special Committee on Afghanistan about how uncoordinated the Government of Canada's response was, as is is borne out by the fact that we evacuated disproportionately fewer people than did our closest allies.

The U.S. evacuated 122,000 persons in the period to the end of August 2021. The United Kingdom evacuated 15,000 persons. Proportionately, that would suggest that we should have evacuated somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 people, yet we evacuated 3,700 people. It's part of a broader pattern, I believe, of an inability of the whole of government to execute when it comes to important files and important crises.

We received the government's response to the special report on Afghanistan. The response to recommendation 2, in saying that the interdepartmental task force “established an effective and efficient working relationship” among all the departments during the crisis, particularly seems completely at odds with what the special committee heard.

As my first question, what is your assessment of how the Government of Canada, and particularly the department, managed the evacuation during that time?

[Weldon Epp, Assistant Deputy Minister, Asia, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

Madam Chair, I'll start off and then turn to my colleague Julie Sunday to supplement.

Thank you for the very important question. It's a question that obviously partner departments and Global Affairs Canada have posed and, in after-action review, undertook to respond to, not only through internal review but also by responding to the recommendations that came forward from the really important work of this committee. I think, as the minister mentioned earlier, they carried forward new investments in capacity to do better and to have better capacity not only to respond but also to coordinate.

The fact is, as the minister mentioned—and to get to the premise of some of your earlier comments—the situation was messy. It had its own unique characteristics. Canada was in a position different from the positions of some of our allies with respect to assets on the ground.

Just to speak to the comparability of how we did, I think all of those are valid questions and all of those have factored into how we analyze, assess and look at how we will work going forward. At the same time, we hope that some of the specifics of the situation will never obtain in the same way.

It's about the capacity to be able to move more nimbly. I think the government's response to recommendation 2 was to agree with the premise but to look at the tool kit that the existing act already provides us to work with.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Was part of our inability to respond at the time related to our underfunding of our armed forces? Is part of the problem that we don't have enough Globemasters, Royal Canadian Air Force personnel and other military personnel to have effected that evacuation in the same way that the United States and the United Kingdom did?

[Weldon Epp]

Madam Chair, with respect, I believe that question could competently be answered only by the Department of National Defence. I think that's an important question, but I don't feel we're in a position to—

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Yes, but you're the lead department, right? You're the lead department responsible for the evacuation. Surely, in the after-action reports, there would have been an analysis of where the gaps were, not just in Global Affairs but among the other departments.

[Weldon Epp]

Madame Chair, my comment from the lead department on this would be that we are prepared to respond to very diverse situations around the world, and Julie can speak to that, but that will always involve a combination of tools. It's next to impossible—very unlikely—that one will always have the tool kit one would want at a given point in time. In the evacuation from Lebanon a few years back, we saw a very active approach that was using charter planes and so on.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

You mentioned that additional resources have been put in place. What sorts of resources are they?

[Weldon Epp]

Julie, do you want to speak to that?

[Julie Sunday]

Every emergency is an opportunity to learn how to improve how we deal with emergencies, and Afghanistan was no exception. One of the key funding decisions in the fall economic update is that there are new resources for consular, and—