Thank you, Madam Chair.
As an independent senator from Manitoba, I am privileged to reside in the territory covered by Treaty 1, the home of the Métis nation.
I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me to testify today.
In September 2022, The Globe and Mail published two articles containing allegations by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada officials that I sent a standard document in August 2021 to stranded Afghans, mostly women fleeing the Taliban. Those allegations are false.
IRCC allegations against me in The Globe and Mail and elsewhere are false. They are not true.
On August 25, 2021, the facilitation template in question was sent to me by George Young, chief of staff to then minister of defence Harjit Sajjan. As members will remember, when Kabul fell, Canada had no diplomatic presence on the ground in Afghanistan, and Canadian special forces were empowered to do what was necessary to get people safely to the airport for evacuation.
Mr. Young received this facilitation template from Global Affairs Canada, and he told me this in writing. As the committee was told on February 8, both Global Affairs and IRCC were issuing facilitation templates, yet IRCC alleged that the facilitation letter I received from Mr. Young was inauthentic. This was despite the fact that the facilitation template I received from him was the exact same facilitation template content that IRCC was sending to vulnerable Afghans.
I will provide the committee with one of the Global Affairs letters from IRCC to compare with what I received. However, my office did request that the first facilitation template I received be changed so that it did not state that the bearer was a Canadian citizen, and Mr. Young quickly sent what was requested.
My office sent this facilitation template to a rolling list of vulnerable Afghans—names we were receiving from trusted advocates in a number of countries. Names for the rolling list were sent frequently to George Young and Mr. Oz Jungic, a senior policy adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Jungic confirmed receipt of the names to me on August 24, with an assurance that they would do everything they could to try to help get these people out.
Mr. Young stated that he had put these names “into the system”. Mr. Jungic emailed to say that he had shared these names “with GAC officials and IRCC”. My office continued to update the Government of Canada on additional Afghans who needed safe passage to the airport in Kabul, most of them women.
As the committee was told on February 8, IRCC testified that the facilitation letters were not meant to facilitate the boarding of a flight at the airport or confirmation of a visa. When George Young sent me the facilitation templates on August 25, he wrote, with the first one,“I have received this from a colleague at GAC...try it. George.” I understood that this meant I was authorized to use the template, and I was assured that the names we sent were being put into the system.
Madam Chair, these facilitation letters came from the chief of staff to the defence minister. IRCC was sending facilitation letters with the same content, also to help vulnerable Afghans escape the Taliban. I trusted then, and I do now, the facilitation templates that Mr. Young provided. I trust them to be authentic, and they helped to save many lives, mostly women.
Ultimately I made the decision to speak publicly to my colleagues in the Senate, when earlier this year I learned that an affidavit had been signed by an official at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada continuing to allege that I was the source of the so-called inauthentic Global Affairs facilitation template. I then decided to provide my own affidavit in support of the Afghans challenging the IRCC, and I can provide this to you if you wish.
I appreciate this opportunity to correct the record.
Thank you.
