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Mr. Luc Desilets (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, BQ)

Dec/7/21 4:37:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my Liberal colleague whether, despite the comments he made about the Taliban, which we all share, his government is prepared to talk, discuss and negotiate with the Taliban in order to facilitate, or even speed up, the process. It is urgent—there are 35,000 people that we want to bring to the country. I am waiting for his response.

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Mr. Greg Fergus

Dec/7/21 4:38:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, again, I want to thank and commend my friend from the Bloc Québécois. I can easily answer his question: The answer is yes. The government is already doing that. We are working with the Taliban government to ensure that we can safely repatriate these Afghans who want to leave and settle in Canada. These discussions are currently under way.

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Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP)

Dec/7/21 4:38:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my question for the parliamentary secretary is this. Would the government be willing to waive the refugee determination requirement for Afghan refugees, as it has done under the Syrian refugee initiative?

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Mr. Greg Fergus

Dec/7/21 4:39:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague from Vancouver is asking an important question. I do not have an answer for her at this time, but I can assure her that I will raise her question to get that answer. We all want the same thing: to provide help to the Afghans swiftly and effectively.

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Mr. Adam van Koeverden (Milton, Lib.)

Dec/7/21 4:39:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments and his commitment to this very important file. I agree that the work that needs to be done does not require a whole new committee. I would like his thoughts on what the next steps should be. How do we achieve this in a non-partisan way?

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Mr. Greg Fergus

Dec/7/21 4:40:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Milton and commend him on the quality of his French. He has worked very hard these past two years, and I congratulate him for the progress he has made. As members of Parliament, we have an obligation to deal with this issue in a non-partisan way, especially when discussing matters of life and death. The best way to achieve this objective is to work with the existing House committees, such as the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, the Standing Committee on National Defence, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Dec/7/21 4:41:01 p.m.
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Before resuming debate, it is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Kenora, Canada-U.S. Relations; the hon. member for Vancouver East, Housing; the hon. member for Kelowna—Lake Country, Employment.

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Mrs. Salma Zahid (Scarborough Centre, Lib.)

Dec/7/21 4:41:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate you on your role; it is good to see you sitting in the chair. As this is my first speech in the 44th Parliament, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people of Scarborough Centre for placing their trust in me once again to be their strong voice in Ottawa. I will work hard every day to be worthy of their trust and to bring the issues they care about to the government and to the House of Commons. I would also like to thank all my campaign team and volunteers. While the COVID environment did present some challenges, their hard work and dedication never ceases to amaze me and their energy keeps me going on the longest days. I thank them. I thank my family, my husband Salman and my sons Umaid and Usman, for their continued support in my political journey. I would like to focus my remarks today on the immigration aspects of the crisis in Afghanistan and what we can do to ensure as many people as possible who are in need are brought safely to Canada and to ensure they are able to settle safely here with their families and build a new life in peace and prosperity. I am a firm believer in learning lessons, so what we do in the future can be improved. A post-mortem of the entirety of Canada’s mission to Afghanistan, not just a few select years, would be a valuable exercise to the benefit of Canada’s foreign policy and international aid and development programs. I would point out that, especially from an immigration perspective, what is happening in Afghanistan is an ongoing crisis. People need help right now. Our focus should be on how we can finish the job and get those who need our help to safety. Let us first acknowledge the progress that has been made to date. More than 4,000 Afghans have already arrived in Canada and are being resettled, and some 415 individuals have already arrived through Canada’s humanitarian program, which targets the resettlement of particularly vulnerable Afghan nationals, including women leaders, human rights advocates, LGBTI individuals, persecuted religious and ethnic minorities, and journalists. Officials at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada are working day and night to process Afghan refugee applications and issue visas. More than 9,000 applications, under the special immigration measures to resettle Afghan nationals who assisted the Government of Canada, along with their family members, have been processed. Officials are doing all they can to stay in contact with and support those who remain in Afghanistan and wish to resettle to Canada. The biggest issue remains the Taliban’s control of the region, which makes it very difficult to get people safely out of the country. We call on the Taliban to allow safe passage for those who wish to leave. The people-to-people ties between Canada and Afghanistan are strong, built over the length of our long-term deployment there, as we did our best to help secure the country and provide development and opportunity for all people of Afghanistan. My community of Scarborough Centre has strong ties to Afghanistan, from business to cultural to personal, and they have watched the events of this past year with deep interest and keen worry. I hear every day from my constituents on this issue. Many are separated from their families, with siblings or parents in Afghanistan. They worry for their safety and for their future, especially the women and girls, for whom, as we all know, life is very challenging and very dangerous under Taliban rule. Canada and our allies must continue to be clear with the Taliban that they must show respect for basic rights, especially for women and girls. We must find ways to support women and girls in the region who need our help. With winter approaching, it is critical the international community works collectively to meet the needs of vulnerable Afghans My constituents want to know how their family members can be brought to safety. They want to know what Canada is doing to help them. Canada has committed to bring 40,000 Afghan refugees to Canada. Given the challenges I have outlined, that will be a challenging goal. I certainly welcome all suggestions and ideas for how meeting this goal can be accelerated so the families in my riding and across Canada can be reunited and their loved ones brought to safety. Already many Afghan refugees have been resettled in the greater Toronto area, and I want to thank local organizations such as the Afghan Women’s Organization and Agincourt Community Services Association that have been working to support and welcome them. A few weeks ago, I met with a group of recently arrived Afghan refugees. As members can imagine, they are excited and relieved to be here, but they also worry about extended family left behind and what the future holds for them in Canada. We need to ensure they are supported and get answers to their questions and we need to ensure lessons learned from the Syrian refugee resettlement are applied in this program. I should note that at the heart of both of these programs is the government-assisted refugees program. A lot of attention is paid to privately sponsored refugees, and this is a great Canadian innovation that sees community groups come together to sponsor and support refugee families for their first year in Canada. It is an important part of our immigration and refugee system, but it cannot be our entire refugee program, which is what the Conservatives proposed just a few months ago in their election platform when they promised to do away with government-assisted refugees. A look at refugee data shows that government-assisted refugees tend to be the more vulnerable, the more at risk, the more in need of Canada’s help. To turn our backs on them is to turn our backs on those that most need Canada's help, and that is not what Canada should be about. The refugees we are helping in Afghanistan are government-assisted refugees and they need Canada’s help. Therefore, my focus is on how we can help make the Afghan refugee program a success and bring these people who need our help here as quickly as we can. I do not oppose the idea of a special committee, but I think these are certainly issues the immigration and refugee committee could take up and bring its expertise to bear by bringing in witnesses from those familiar with the situation on the ground to organizations focused on resettlement to provide actionable recommendations to the government. What gives me pause is what seems like a very broad request for documents, many of which are likely to contain information that could compromise national security, military tactics, intelligence sources and methods, and the identity and location of Canadian citizens in Afghanistan or interpreters or contractors who assisted Canada and our allies. I do not see how this would help Canada bring more Afghan refugees to Canada. My constituents are not asking me for documents; they are asking me to help their families, and this request could potentially put their families in danger. If we truly want to help the refugees, let us get the politics out of the motion and focus on what really matters here: helping those who need Canada’s help.

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Mr. Larry Maguire (Brandon—Souris, CPC)

Dec/7/21 4:50:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the issue is that the government has said it will bring 40,000 Afghans who supported us in our armed forces and helped our efforts in Afghanistan, but only 10% of them are here. We do not even know where that number of 40,000 comes from or whether it covers the number of people who have to get out of the country. It could be more than that. However, it is a number that the government picked and there has been no debate about it, so that could be the kind of question that would be asked at a committee like this. Earlier today, one of my colleagues from the Liberal Party said that we should be talking about what was happening today or what may happen in the future, not the past. One of the reasons we study history is so we do not make the mistakes of the past, which is very important in this discussion. Sure, we want to do things in the future, but the government has had a lot of time to do those things for the future. We waited and waited until the House resumed, because it was our first opportunity to have a debate like this and to have a committee set up—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Dec/7/21 4:51:56 p.m.
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The hon. member for Scarborough Centre.

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Mrs. Salma Zahid

Dec/7/21 4:51:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the hon. member for all the work we did together on the immigration committee in the last Parliament. I agree with the member that it has been slow. We need to do better, and better is always possible, but I want to remind him that the department and the officials continue to process applications for Afghan refugees day in and day out. They have mobilized the entire global network to process the visas and issue them on an urgent basis. There are 4,000 Afghan refugees here. Another 500 will be coming this year.

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Mr. Sébastien Lemire (Abitibi—Témiscamingue, BQ)

Dec/7/21 4:52:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as a result of this debate, my thoughts are also with our veterans and our troops who served in Afghanistan. Several years later, I find that the message being sent gives them the impression that their mission was futile. What message should we be sending these military members who, in many cases, sacrificed their lives or put their mental health at risk? How can we help them and ensure that they have support so their sacrifices are not forgotten?

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Mrs. Salma Zahid

Dec/7/21 4:53:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, yes, we need to thank the people who helped the Canadian mission in Afghanistan. Canada and Afghanistan have had a long-lasting relationship, with the long deployment, and many Afghan people have been there for our Canadian troops. It is very important that we continue our work and ensure that we bring the vulnerable people here, the people who have helped, as well as those people, especially Afghan women and girls, whose situation is really terrible. We should all figure out ways in which we can do better to bring more people here as soon as possible, so they can start a new life in Canada.

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Mr. Matthew Green (Hamilton Centre, NDP)

Dec/7/21 4:54:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, without a doubt, the hon. member for Scarborough Centre is well connected in her community. As she expressed and hearing the stories from folks who were being settled through this process, they will know the dire consequences their relatives, friends and families are being left with back home. I think back to the government's attempts to settle 25,000 Syrian refugees. As a former city councillor, one who was working on the settlement side in Hamilton, I have grave concerns about the lack of adequate planning and perhaps supports for local communities in settling these purported 40,000 refugees. My question for the hon. member is this. What is her government doing to ensure that, while these lofty promises are being floated out there, particularly at election times, local cities and municipalities are going to be adequately equipped and funded to ensure those who do make it here are accounted for?

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Mrs. Salma Zahid

Dec/7/21 4:55:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have been a member and the chair of the citizenship and immigration committee. We have done important work in that committee to ensure that the settlement agencies that do the important work to settle refugees here, as well as new immigrants, have all the supports they need to help. I have seen first-hand the work of those agencies in my riding. I will continue to work with them to ensure they have the support and help they need to serve new immigrants.

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Mr. James Bezan (Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, CPC)

Dec/7/21 4:56:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, who is someone I am honoured to serve with. As a veteran, he has done numerous missions and tours in Afghanistan and I am looking forward to his comments later. I know that sometimes he can be a little “rough” around the edges, but we are looking forward to his comments. I am glad to be able to speak to the motion we brought forward on this day of supply, which is asking to set up a special committee to look into the crisis in Afghanistan and get our friends, allies and citizens out of Afghanistan after it fell to the Taliban; to find out what lessons we can learn so we do not make these mistakes again; and to find out why this was not made a higher priority by the government. It should not have been a surprise to the Prime Minister or anyone in cabinet. We know that on May 2, 2019, CSIS presented a report that said that if the United States decided to withdraw from Afghanistan, the Taliban would recapture the entire country, including the city of Kabul, in very short order. That report was in 2019. Then, of course, Donald Trump, when he was still president of the United States, announced on February 29, 2020 that he was officially withdrawing and winding down U.S. operations in Afghanistan. Of course, the coalition that Canada had been a part of in Afghanistan would not be able to be sustained without the U.S. in theatre. The question becomes this: If CSIS warned, based upon sound intelligence, that Afghanistan would be quickly captured by the Taliban, and Donald Trump announced the withdrawal in February 2020, why did the government not act? Instead of planning for the withdrawal and making sure we got our interpreters out before the country started to fall under the control of the brutal Taliban and the harsh conditions that exist there today, we could have been moving people out. Instead, the Prime Minister planned for a selfish and unnecessary, $650-million election. That is despicable. Many of us on this side of the House and even members on the other side were getting contacted by veterans of the Canadian Armed Forces. They were pleading with all of us to get their friends who were over there out. These were people they served alongside, who supported them as interpreters and drivers and made sure their base camps and forward-operating locations were safe and secure. They served together. They were a team. We lost 158 Canadian soldiers, and over 40,000 served. Our Canadian veterans who served developed great relationships and considered their allies to be brothers and sisters in arms. To then see the government turn its back on these allies was so disheartening. The true heroes throughout all of this have been those veterans. I would like to mention guys like Corey Shelson, Tim and Jamie Laidler, General David Fraser and General Denis Thompson, among others who have really done yeoman's service in organizing and getting people out of Afghanistan. In particular, because I and my office have been working closely with him, I want to highlight Robin Rickards from Thunder Bay. Robin has had multiple tours in Afghanistan. He started contacting me over six years ago regarding getting these interpreters out of the country. Under the previous Conservative government, we had a special immigration program for Afghanistan interpreters. It got filled up; people quit applying and it wound down. We were able to get a few more out after that, as the Leader of the Opposition mentioned this morning in his speech. However, the reality is that people like Corey just would not quit, and they forewarned the government and us as members of Parliament. I know the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River worked incredibly closely with Robin as well. Every time any of us contacted cabinet, whether it was the minister of defence, the minister of immigration, the minister of foreign affairs or the Prime Minister himself, it seemed to fall on deaf ears. Nothing seemed to happen until the fall of Kabul in the middle of a federal election. These veterans, through the Veterans Transition Network and many other NGOs, raised money to fund the safe houses. Generous donations came in from veterans, current serving members and Canadians at large. They chartered flights, bought airline tickets and continued to build both the air bridge and the land bridge to safe havens for those who were left behind. Of course, because they were relying on generosity and because things started to heat up so desperately, the money for those safe houses started to run out. On behalf of those veterans, a number of us asked in this House and in writing if the Government of Canada would give the organizations $5 million, so that we could keep the safe houses open and keep those interpreters and their families, the hundreds of people who were in the safe houses, safe in Kabul. The government callously said no. Five million dollars is a drop in the bucket around this place, and it would have gone a long way to protecting Afghan interpreters who were waiting to be processed as applicants to come to Canada. The people in the Veterans Transition Network really did a lot of heavy lifting. They were part of the group that identified and made sure that the people making claims to come to Canada as refugees had served with our forces and had all their documents in order. They were reaching out to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to get all the applications processed, but unfortunately all of that kind of went up in smoke when the fall of Kabul happened. We saw the complete chaos that occurred at the Kabul airport. Since that time in the middle of August, when we saw the chaos and craziness that happened, our allies, like Germany and the United States, have continued to move out the refugees and citizens at risk, as well as interpreters and support staff to their armed forces, without any problem. They have been chartering flights in and out of Kabul non-stop. That is why the United States is already sitting on something like over 40,000 refugees in the mainland. However, we are not seeing that happen here. Why is the Government of Canada not chartering those flights or at least making sure there are tickets on commercial aircraft for all those applicants who are sitting there waiting in Kabul or Kandahar to get out? The Liberals talk a good game. We see the minister of immigration almost throw his shoulder out every question period here, patting himself on the back for getting 4,000 Afghan refugees out so far. The Canadian Armed Forces identified over 23,600, yet IRCC has processed only 14,675 and there are only 4,000 here so far. That means there are 9,600 Afghan refugees, interpreters, LGBTQ community members, and ethnic and religious minorities like the Hindi, the Sikh and the Hazaras, all sitting there waiting to be processed. They made the applications, yet red tape seems to be holding them back. I have to thank my staff. They have been dealing directly with Afghan refugees, with our interpreters and our friends and allies, including Canadian citizens who are still trapped in Afghanistan. Some of them had to leave Kabul when the safe houses closed. They went back to their homes only to find that they had either been burnt down or were being lived in by the Taliban themselves. There were actually notices issued to arrest them. I know some went back, saying, “If I turn myself in, maybe they won't kill my family and they'll execute only me.” We have so many stories of people who served with our forces, who served as journalists and who have been left behind and given up on Canada. That is not the Canada we are supposed to be. We are supposed to be the Canada that, because of the great work of our men and women in uniform who go out there and right the evils in the world, stands up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. Those people sacrificed blood and treasure in serving Canada. Let us support our veterans and let us bring home those Afghan allies who served with us.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Dec/7/21 5:06:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am someone who advocated many years ago, when I was in opposition, that we get Afghan translators to Canada, and I do to this very day. I am joined by my Liberal caucus colleagues and all members of this House in recognizing how critically important it is that we open our doors and accept refugees from Afghanistan. There is no doubt about that. We also believe it is absolutely essential that our committees on defence, immigration and foreign affairs deal with this. Within the motion there are serious concerns about security. There is information that could potentially be harmful for Canada's future and the best interests of real people today. Does the member not have confidence in our standing committees? Why does he feel the Conservatives were unable to negotiate something? It seems to me to be a bit of an easy way out. Can he explain?

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Mr. James Bezan

Dec/7/21 5:07:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, why would we want to split this work up over three committees, when those three committees can be doing other work? We should be having a special committee, as we have done in the past, such as in the previous Parliament, on Canada-China relations. There have been other committees in the past, like the special committee on the war in Afghanistan, which operated through Parliament the entire time and was outside the Standing Committee on National Defence. This would be a short-term committee to look at how the government failed and how we can correct it so we can get better in the future. If the member does not want to learn from the mistakes his government has made, I can see that. He has always been in here as an apologist, trying to orchestrate the cover-ups that are so important to the front benches. If the member is sincere about saving lives, let us get this committee to work. Let us find out what is happening and make sure we can come up with ideas on how to go forward.

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Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP)

Dec/7/21 5:08:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the truth of the matter is that this problem has been escalated between successive governments. The Harper administration, from 2009 to 2011, did offer an immigration stream for Afghan interpreters. However, with that program there were very specific requirements. First, they had to have served 12 months before they could qualify for that measure, and second, it applied only if they had served from 2007 onward. That is to say that if they served before 2007, they did not qualify. If they served 360 days as opposed to 365 days, they did not qualify. It was reported that two out of three of those who applied were refused. Successive governments have failed Afghan interpreters and collaborators who supported our military. With that in mind, would the Conservatives agree that in going forward we need to take responsibility for past actions and look for solutions to the problem, including waiving the refugee determination requirements?

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Mr. James Bezan

Dec/7/21 5:10:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member from the NDP seems to forget that our Afghan interpreter refugee program was fully subscribed. People used it, and at the end it was just a trickle that was coming in. People who came here were proud to be coming to Canada. They became citizens and they sponsored their families to get to Canada as well. I am very proud of that program. I am proud of our forces and the job they did in fighting for women, girls and those who could not stand up for themselves in Afghanistan, in liberating villages and in fighting the tough fights in and around Kandahar. We need to be there with those veterans now as they are trying to get their friends and family out.

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