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
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
That's fair enough.
You and my husband both have something in common. You both served in Afghanistan, and thank you for that.
You understand how imperative it is that government processes keep our men and women in uniform safe. This is why, for a variety of reasons, I have an issue with what happened here.
Senator McPhedran has said that she would do this again. Do you think what she did in issuing these letters—in your words, without authorization—was ethical?
Liberal
Harjit S. Sajjan Liberal Vancouver South, BC
One, I'm not assuming what she did or did not do. I'm not here to investigate that. What I'm trying to say is that I did not authorize anyone on how the facilitation letters should be disseminated.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Are you aware of whether she had authorization from any minister to do this?
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Okay.
George Young got this facilitation letter from someone at Global Affairs. Are you or your department aware of who that person is?
Liberal
Harjit S. Sajjan Liberal Vancouver South, BC
The thing is, in a lot of these questions you're asking me about what George Young did. I can't answer those questions.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
He was your chief of staff. How can you not answer that?
Liberal
Liberal
Harjit S. Sajjan Liberal Vancouver South, BC
I was focused on the work we were doing. My chief of staff, the full—
Conservative
Liberal
Harjit S. Sajjan Liberal Vancouver South, BC
To be honest, if you really want me to get into the details, we were monitoring intelligence very closely on the threats that were coming hour by hour. Things were changing. I had to stay focused on that.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Okay, that's great. Thank you.
What you've said in testimony just in this interchange is that people were phoning you about people who needed to be evacuated, and you directed them to your chief of staff. Was that a special process for getting people on a list for evacuation?
Liberal
Harjit S. Sajjan Liberal Vancouver South, BC
No. Instead of my taking up time in having conversations, the information about which phone number to give, what the process was and who they'd need to contact to provide names.... That's what my team was doing so that it could go into—
Liberal
Harjit S. Sajjan Liberal Vancouver South, BC
What we were trying to avoid was having people contact us at National Defence thinking we're making the decisions. We were trying to push that into the interdepartmental process, to teams that were actually doing that work.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Did Mr. Young act as a rogue agent, then, in this regard by sending that letter to Senator McPhedran?
Liberal
Harjit S. Sajjan Liberal Vancouver South, BC
One thing I can say is that my former chief of staff at that time worked diligently.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
He worked diligently on sending a letter that was altered to a senator.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
But it's unfair what happened to all the people who came here, Minister. It is.
Conservative
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Thank you.
I'll just say this. Do you actually think it's fair that 600-plus Afghan foreign nationals had a letter from a senator while your interpreter still languishes in Afghanistan?
