Evidence of meeting #61 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was afghanistan.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
Okay. Were there any other MPs or senators who called you and with whom you spoke about this issue?
Liberal
Harjit S. Sajjan Liberal Vancouver South, BC
I was in touch with many different people at that time. Most of the time, I was talking, obviously, to my colleagues who were a part of the operation—the Minister of Immigration and the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
Did any MPs or senators call you to talk about a facilitation letter?
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
Did any of them call you to talk specifically about a facilitation letter?
Liberal
Harjit S. Sajjan Liberal Vancouver South, BC
No, we weren't talking about facilitation letters. We were mainly focused on people trying to get information on either who they needed to call or where they could provide names of people they knew in the country.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
You mentioned that you were busy during this time. You spent a lot of time dealing with different issues. How much time each day did you spend on this issue?
Liberal
Harjit S. Sajjan Liberal Vancouver South, BC
It was almost 24-7. I could tell you my routine literally was—
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
I don't need the routine; 24-7 is good.
You're telling us that during that time you did not check your emails.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
How did you do your job if you didn't check your emails?
Liberal
Harjit S. Sajjan Liberal Vancouver South, BC
To be honest with you, when you're running an operation like that, you don't have time to check your emails. We were on what we called a very strict battle rhythm of briefings and phone calls, secure phone calls, to make sure the intelligence coming in was up to date and the appropriate decisions that had to be made—
Conservative
Liberal
Harjit S. Sajjan Liberal Vancouver South, BC
No. The way I look at it, I did not have time to look at emails at that time.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
When the election was called around that time, what happened to the number of hours a day you were spending on this?
Conservative
Conservative
Liberal
Harjit S. Sajjan Liberal Vancouver South, BC
It was only when the final flight out of Kabul was done. That's when we conducted, I think, a couple of days' work. It was then, only then, that I started going into my campaign.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
In looking back on this, do you have any regret that you didn't know about this, that you didn't read those emails and that you didn't see this? People were affected. Do you regret that it wasn't shut down, that it wasn't caught and flagged?
Liberal
Harjit S. Sajjan Liberal Vancouver South, BC
I'll be honest with you. My main focus in this, and please let me finish this one.... As to the facilitation letters, I know where you're trying to go with this in trying to find some type of smoking gun. We were focused on trying to get as many people out....
I have no regret about how the process was going. In a crisis situation, everybody has to stay focused on what they're doing at that time. I am very thankful that our troops did amazing work and that we didn't lose anybody. Sadly, some of our allies did.
I have no regret about what was taking place, what our actions were at National Defence and what we were doing. I wish we could have gotten more people out.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
So if you were faced with one of these 600 people who were impacted, you'd just say to them, “I have no regrets.”