Madam Speaker, on July 14, I sat on a Zoom call with a former Canadian interpreter from Helmand Province. On that call were several of my colleagues, including the hon. members for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound and York—Simcoe. It was an emotional call. It was an interpreter who was pleading for his life. The Taliban were 500 metres away, and they were hunting those who had helped allied forces during the Afghanistan war. I was in my constituency office, and after that call I actually had tears streaming down my face. My staff asked me what had happened. I said I had just heard the most horrific pleas that I could ever hear.
From that time, we saw Afghanistan descend into chaos. We all know the stories about what happened at the airport, but through it all there were Canadians and Canadian veterans. In my former role as critic for Veterans Affairs I was dealing directly with those veterans, and being supplied with hundreds of names of those whose lives were in jeopardy in Afghanistan and who had helped our Canadian Forces. I was supplying those names directly to the minister at the time. I was getting phone calls at 3 a.m. from Afghanistan. Somehow my cellphone number got out. The callers were begging for help, and all I could do was supply their names to the minister directly. I thank the minister for taking my calls and being there at a time when people needed him the most.
There were veterans, volunteers, NGOs and individuals like Zarmina and Khalil Nekzai in my riding of Barrie—Innisfil. Zarmina had gone through the situation with the Taliban earlier and had escaped Afghanistan in advance of Taliban rule. She told me she came out on a donkey to another country and found a life in Canada. She had given back to young girls in Afghanistan by trying to educate them and trying to get them to play hockey. She came into my office many times crying, begging and pleading for any way that we could help those hockey girls of Kabul to come to Canada, and asking that we do everything we could.
We saw the descending chaos and it should have been no surprise to anyone here, even the government, that the Americans had already concluded that they were going to leave Afghanistan in September. There should have been better planning. We need to know this, and this is why this committee is so important. We need to find out what happened from the time the Americans announced that they were going to depart Afghanistan to the time that Afghanistan actually fell. What were the actions of the government at that time? What were the Liberals doing other than preparing for an election that nobody wanted?
I will remind the House that at the time it was not just that Afghanistan was falling: Wildfires in B.C. were decimating the interior of British Columbia. The priority of the government at that time was to call an election, when it should have been dealing with all of these other issues. The desperation, the despair and the anxiety that were coming to my office, and I am sure the offices of colleagues in the House, were incredible to deal with. In fact, I did not start my campaign until two and a half weeks after the election was called because this was my focus.
I was supplying as many names as I could. People not just in my riding, but all across Canada and around the world were giving me names to get to the Liberal government so they could be helped in Afghanistan before everything fell.
There were others. There was the Veterans Transition Network, which included Corey Shelson, a former army officer who served in Afghanistan. There were people on the ground in Afghanistan: Canadian Armed Forces veterans who were desperately putting their lives in jeopardy trying to help people at that time. Through the whole process, as we have heard several examples of today, many Canadian military personnel were on the ground; however, diplomatic officials and consular officials had been pulled back. There was nowhere for these people to go.
In fact, I have heard stories. I have emails that I will read into the record about some of the desperate attempts by people to get to the airport and what they were being told by the government about where they needed to be. In one case, people were told to go to a hotel and that there would be Canadian officials there. There were no Canadian officials there. People were risking their lives going from the safe house that they were in to this hotel, and when they got to the hotel American forces were there and they were told, “No, we're not taking any Canadians at this point.” Where were the Canadian officials? They were nowhere to be found. In one case, the 82-year-old father of a lady in my riding left that hotel only to be beaten up by members of the Taliban because they figured out why he went there. We need to know why these types of things happened.
Another email I got stated, “Hi there, I've emailed IRCC dozens of times and now I'm asking for your help. Please, please don't let me get killed. Please help me get my family out of Afghanistan. I dedicated my life for Canada and helping any Canadian that crossed my path. Please help me.” Another said, “How long do we have to stay at this airport? This is two days. There's no water. There's no bathroom, additional security. We did not sleep and we will be dying with the situation. We are close to this gate. Where are the Canadians to help us?”
I cannot say what he says next, but those are the instructions that he received. This is why we have to get to the bottom of where those failures were. Why was the government too distracted at the time to help not just those Canadians who were still in Afghanistan, but those who were vulnerable?
The instructions people received read, “You are receiving this message from Global Affairs Canada, Consular Services with regards to an assisted departure from Afghanistan. Please find attached a letter of facilitation which may assist you to clear checkpoints to access the Karzai Airport. We also remind you of the following guidance for the airport: Please proceed to the north gate.”
We know the stories of the north gate. There were people getting hung up in barbed wire, and people being shot because they were being identified by the Taliban at that time.
The instructions continued, “Wear red if you have it.” That identified people as Canadian. That is exactly what was going on. The instructions that were coming in were putting our people in peril. They also instructed, “Make your way to the front of the crowd and identify yourself as Canadian.” How could they do that when there were thousands of people who were doing the same thing?
I think of Sam, whose family was there. They were told to go to the airport. They were given notice that there was a flight available to them at the airport, and they had two hours to get to the airport. They sent me the video of themselves driving to the airport. People were being shot in front of them and they were driving over dead bodies. They felt so at risk that they did not make their flight, but turned back and went home to a safe place.
Speaking of safe places, we know that our Canadian interpreters, those who are vulnerable, had safe houses, but they were not being funded by the government. They were being funded by private organizations and private donors raising billions of dollars. At a time when those safe houses needed to be extended, what did the Liberals do, despite being asked to fund them? The government did not cancel them, but it did not fund the extension of them. This means that right now those interpreters and their families whose houses have been blown up by the Taliban have nowhere to go. They are living out in the open in the middle of winter, being hunted down by the Taliban.
We need to know why these types of things could happen. The government members can gloss over it all they want. They can paint as rosy a picture as they want. However, Afghan Canadians and others trying to help those who were vulnerable, those interpreters and others who helped us, know the truth: that it was a government that was in chaos in dealing with this situation.
We need to know, through the proposed committee, why this situation happened so that it never happens again. We also need to better understand how we can help those who are still struggling to leave Afghanistan to come to this country.
I know the government talks about politicization and the politics of this, but since when is demanding answers and getting answers politicization of an issue? That is what Afghans and Afghan Canadians expect us to do; that is what our veterans expect us to do, and damn it we are going to do it.
