Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 29th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Your time is up, Mr. El-Khoury. You will get an opportunity in the second round.

With that, we will now proceed to Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe for six minutes.

Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe, please begin.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much, Madam Minister.

I'd also like to thank the witnesses for their work and their military service. I'm very grateful to them for taking the time to attend today's committee meeting.

Madam Minister, in your opening remarks, you mentioned recommendation 18. It was originally the Conservatives' idea to move a motion to create the Special Committee on Afghanistan, but you should know that the Bloc Québécois introduced an amendment that, with the concurrence of the Conservatives, called for the committee to be tasked with issuing recommendations with a focus on what needed to be done not only to help Afghans in the immediate term, when the committee was sitting, but also to improve our response to other international crises of this kind in the future.

Recommendation 18 calls for you to establish a whole-of-government team. How are intergovernmental discussions about this team going?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you for the question.

Of course, we're working hard with our partners in government to continue to build on the lessons learned from this and other crises. This is what our government does every time, whether it's in Ukraine, Haiti or Afghanistan. We share the lessons learned.

Every recommendation from this committee is very important to us, because this committee's work is important too.

We continue to work very hard with our partners in government to ensure that next time we will have learned from these lessons to improve our response.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Of course, on this whole-of-government team, you work closely with Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.

Even before the Special Committee on Afghanistan made its recommendations, the Bloc Québécois had proposed that a permanent emergency mechanism be established at IRCC in the event of a natural disaster or armed conflict of international proportions, such as the earthquake in Haiti, for example, or the fall of Kabul.

We learned that the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship had asked its officials to look into this avenue. It does affect you because when you attempt to get people out of certain countries, you actually must work with IRCC to get them into Canada.

Do you find it takes too long? Are you hopeful that this mechanism will be put in place swiftly?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Once again, thank you for the question.

We continue to support the work of our partners like IRCC. So if that department decides to have a committee like this for another crisis, we will, of course, continue to support their work.

I don't know if our department has had any discussions about this recommendation, but I could ask the deputy minister to respond to that as well.

[Bill Matthews, Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence]

Thank you, Madam Minister.

There are always discussions, yes. That said, most of the challenges that all governments around the world face involve more than one department. Therefore, cooperation between departments is really par for the course. However, one of the departments involved has to take primary responsibility and in this case it's the Department of Foreign Affairs. We continue to cooperate to learn from our experiences.

If there's time, perhaps Major General Prévost would like to add something with respect to his work.

[MGen Paul Prévost, Director of Staff, Strategic Joint Staff, Department of National Defence]

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Minister.

We are not privy to progress made inside the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, but we do hold discussions on all of these crises weekly, if not daily. The Afghanistan issue is a unique crisis. The interdepartmental governance system involves deputy ministers and assistant deputy ministers, of which I am one. Just yesterday, I discussed the Afghanistan issue with my counterparts at the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.

To give you an example, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Department of National Defence and the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship worked quickly. The Minister of National Defence approved the deployment of 100 Canadian Armed Forces personnel to Poland to assist the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship in dealing with the flood of refugees crossing from Ukraine into Poland. So these are—

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

So that's a lesson learned from what happened, and now we're going to move forward even further.

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I would like to add that—

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

It's just that I don't have that much time, and I would be remiss if I didn't ask you a question about Bill C‑41.

We just heard from the Minister of Justice, who was unable to explain to us why it took so long, despite the fact that the solution was there. He told us that there's been a lot of discussion behind closed doors, but that he had to respect cabinet confidence.

Were you involved in those discussions? I'm not asking you what was said those discussions; I just want to know if you were part of them.

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

As I said before, prior to the start of this special committee, I was the Minister of Public Services and Procurement.

With respect to those discussions, no, I wasn't—

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

When were you appointed Minister of National Defence?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Let me finish my response, please.

I wasn't involved in discussions on Bill C‑41, but it's important to remember that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry to interrupt, Minister, but the time is up for Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe.

We will now proceed to Ms. Kwan.

Ms. Kwan, you will have six minutes for your round of questions. Please begin.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the minister and the officials for being here today.

I'd like to get a little bit into the DND referrals, specifically the individuals who are, for example, interpreters for the Department of National Defence or who have served Canada in some way.

Could the minister advise regarding how DND referrals were made and how these referrals are vetted?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Defence serves as a validating partner to support IRCC's policies, including its new policy to facilitate the reunification of former advisers who worked with the defence team and members of their families. It is a supporting role that we play as a validating partner.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

DND makes referrals, though, for IRCC's consideration. How did you determine who you would make those referrals for?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Let me ask the chief of the defence staff to pick up where I left off.

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

Madam Chair, we started up a team in our strategic joint staff under General Prévost to help process all of these files. From there, we were able to validate the files and then make a referral from that perspective.

For the exact details, I will turn it over to General Prévost to elaborate.

[MGen Paul Prévost]

Thank you, Chief.

Madam Chair, thank you for the member's question.

The files that DND, CAF and my team vet for IRCC are files where applicants apply to the SIM program. We didn't refer on our own files to IRCC as a department. We just make sure that the files submitted to immigration have a significant nexus to CAF—members who have served in Afghanistan with us. We have to establish that link, and the way we do that is by looking at the referrals. Sometimes the Afghan national will submit the names of people he worked for and we contact those individuals. We look at the contracts we had with all the Afghans.

We go through a whole bunch of databases to make sure there was a significant relationship with the CAF, after which we validate that and provide the answer to the Minister of Immigration.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Given the period in which Canada had armed forces and personnel in Afghanistan doing a variety of different tasks in support of Canada, in the service of Canada, and because these contracts are signed by your department and individuals are put on these various contracts, you have a record of all of that. Therefore, you have a record of how many people served Canada in different capacities in your system—do you not?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Of course, we are continuing to support IRCC in this process, but it is primarily run out of IRCC. In terms of numbers and past files, etc., those numbers would need to be gleaned from IRCC.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you, Minister. I appreciate that the work is being done by IRCC. What I'm trying to get at, though, is the number of Afghans who worked for Canada under your department, under the Department of National Defence, both by contract.... Some of them were interpreters and some of them worked as security guards or in other capacities.

Is there a figure that the department can provide to the committee of how many Afghans served Canada during that period?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I personally do not have that number with me. I will ask the chief of the defence staff to indicate whether record-keeping occurred and the quality of that record-keeping.

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

Madam Chair, I will try to add some context to the question. This is a very complex situation, and I'll use my own experience there.