Afghanistan committee  Mr. Chair, first let me say the fact that we were able to project combat power from Canada into a contested environment on the other side of the world where we had not had a military presence for seven years and rescue 3,700 people is pretty amazing when you think about it. How

Afghanistan committee  Mr. Chair, those numbers are accurate. We received somewhere in the neighbourhood of 7,500 inquiries, or Afghans who were interested, but we were able to validate about 3,800 who had an enduring relationship with the Canadian Armed Forces.

Afghanistan committee  Mr. Chair, I don't have those numbers in front of me. The numbers we're talking about are as of April 1 of this year. It's important to note that after the evacuation efforts ceased, requests still kept coming in. In fact, they come in to this day.

Afghanistan committee  That is a crucial question for those of us who served in Afghanistan. It's a very personal answer that we have to give as we answer the question of whether it was it worth it. Was our sacrifice in that country worth it? When I talk to our members it's a very emotional time beca

Afghanistan committee  Mr. Chair, I'll go back to my previous statement. Our assessment on April 1 was that should western forces withdraw, the Taliban would likely decisively defeat the ANDSF, the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, capture most major urban areas and re-establish Taliban cont

Afghanistan committee  It was increasingly more evident. Of course, with intelligence assessment, nothing is ever 100%. No one can predict with absolute certainty the future. We deal in probabilities with intelligence assessments.

Afghanistan committee  Mr. Chair, to address the specific question, we received in late March a request for assistance from Global Affairs Canada to put what is called a “strategic advisory team” into the embassy to focus solely on embassy security. That team was in place. It arrived on April 24. Its r

Afghanistan committee  Mr. Chair, the answer is yes. The situation on the ground was fluid. One of the lessons we've taken away from this is the delegation of authority to the lowest levels. Our commanders and our young leaders on the ground made decisions at times to take Afghans who weren't on the l

Afghanistan committee  Mr. Chair, the simple answer is no. I will ask Vice-Admiral Auchterlonie if he has those stats.

Afghanistan committee  I'm not sure that we have those numbers with any degree of accuracy.

Afghanistan committee  Mr. Chair, thanks for the opportunity to add some more detail to the minister's statement. I think we need to look at this in two periods—pre-August 15, before Kabul fell to the Taliban, and then post-August 15. Before August 15, yes, there were some flights that were not at ful

Afghanistan committee  The deputy minister is right. We have not received an opinion on that.

Afghanistan committee  I'll add that our role in Poland is one of a humanitarian nature. We are there supporting the Polish Territorial Defence Forces in the staffing of their reception centres. Some have asked why we weren't there right away. The simple answer is we weren't needed. The Poles didn't

Afghanistan committee  The fact that we are well connected with our allies, Mr. Chair, means that this operation was well coordinated from an international multinational perspective. I have lots of details and lessons learned with respect to working with allies, which we'll be able to share, understand

Afghanistan committee  Mr. Chair, I'll talk about our intelligence assessment and how that evolved after the Doha agreement was signed. From the announcement of the U.S. withdrawal, the situation in that country deteriorated, and our assessment evolved with it. We have to remember that a lot of our i