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, 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  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, 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  On July 27, we received a request for assistance to support this operation from GAC and IRCC, so DND and CAF were in support.

Afghanistan committee  Mr. Chair, for reasons of operational security, we're not going to get into the exact composition of the team, but I'm going to turn it over to the commander of our special operations forces command, Major General Steve Boivin, to say what he can without compromising us.

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, I was actually on the ground in Afghanistan in 2014 when we lowered the flag at ISAF headquarters and the Canadians moved out. That's when Operation Addenda was established to provide force protection for the Canadian embassy. I do not know the exact year that we tra

Afghanistan committee  Mr. Chair, Operation Aegis began on July 30, with me issuing what's called a CDS directive, to begin the operation, which was focused on the evacuation.

Afghanistan committee  We generally don't give named operations to a strategic advisory team with an embassy.

Afghanistan committee  Yes.