No. It said, “a colleague from GAC...try it”. Then there's a period and then “George”. Attached to that was the first template, which included the words “Canadian citizen”. I asked Laura to write back to say that we were helping Afghans and to ask that we please be given a document we could use for Afghans. Very promptly we received a second template with “Canadian citizen” removed. All of the other wording was exactly the same. All of the insignia—the Global Affairs stamp, etc.—was exactly the same.
In an extreme humanitarian crisis, in a huge emergency, is not when bureaucratic processes should triumph. Frankly, the people from the government who were in the midst of that crisis and with whom I was communicating were far more experienced than I was. After many emails and examples we gave saying that these women were being turned away by our own Canadian soldiers—and our raising this went on for days and nights, with us saying, “They say there's a form. What's the form? What is it that these women need?”—finally, around noon on August 25, that was the email we received.
I was not the only one to receive that email. It was sent to Minister Monsef and her staffer. It was sent to me and the colleague I was working with. It came from George Young, and it was copied to Mr. Jungic at Global Affairs.