A Canadian veterans group is giving up its efforts to evacuate Afghans who supported Ottawa’s military and diplomatic mission in the country, citing staff burnout and a federal immigration system that is overburdened with red tape.
The Veterans Transition Network, which says it raised $3.6-million and helped rescue 2,061 Afghans since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August, 2021, is refocusing on its main priority of helping Canadian veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental-health problems.
Oliver Thorne, VTN executive director, said onerous government paperwork, lack of federal funding and the difficulty of finding safe routes out of Afghanistan forced the charitable organization to give up its evacuation work.
Mr. Thorne said VTN staff are exhausted from performing double duty, especially the additional workload of handling the complicated application process put in place by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. The paperwork and security vetting causes significant delays in approvals of special visas for Canada’s Afghan allies, he said.
Canada committed to resettling 40,000 Afghan refugees. Learn more about why thousands are still stuck overseas here.
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
RCMP TO RECEIVE $5.1-MILLION TO AID COMMUNITY RESPONSES TO UNMARKED BURIAL SITES AT FORMER RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS – The RCMP, who have long faced criticism over their troubled relationship with Indigenous people in Canada, are poised to receive $5.1-million over five years, beginning this fiscal year, to support community-led responses to unmarked burial sites at former residential schools. Story here.
AN INSIDE LOOK AT PATRICK BROWN’S PITCH FOR SELLING CONSERVATIVE PARTY MEMBERSHIPS – An apology to the Tamil community, improving cricket infrastructure, and putting a visa office in Kathmandu are just some of the promises Patrick Brown has made in hopes of becoming the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Story here from The Canadian Press.
CANADA PREPPING MORE AID AS UKRAINE WAR ENTERS WHAT FORMER U.S. DEFENCE SECRETARY CALLS ‘CRITICAL’ PHASE – International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan says Canada is looking at more ways to help humanitarian crisis in eastern Europe as about 100 troops deploy to Poland to help with refugees fleeing war in Ukraine. Story here from CBC.
‘STRONG ARGUMENT’ TO BE MADE WHAT’S HAPPENING IN UKRAINE IS A GENOCIDE, SAYS DEFENCE MINISTER – Canada’s Defence Minister Anita Anand says that there’s a “strong argument” to be made that the “atrocities” in Ukraine occurring at the hands of the Russians amount to genocide. Story here from CTVNews.ca.
POPE FRANCIS TO MAKE THREE CANADIAN STOPS IN JULY TO MEET RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL SURVIVORS, SOURCES SAY – Pope Francis is expected to visit at least three cities during a late July trip to Canada, according to a new report from CBC. Sources involved in the planning of the trip told CBC the Pope will likely make stops in Edmonton, Quebec City and Iqaluit during what is scheduled to be about a four-day trip to the country. Story here from CBC.
RCMP REVIEW OF OLD SEXUAL ASSAULT FILES SENDS MORE THAN 200 BACK TO INVESTIGATORS – The RCMP has reviewed more than 30,000 of its previous sexual assault investigations and has found “consistent deficiencies” in how they were handled. The review, which looked at sexual assault investigations that took place between 2015 and 2017 and did not result in charges, sent 327 files for further investigation — about 1 per cent of all the files. Of those, 242 were reopened, resulting in 26 charges being sworn. Story here from CBC.
THIS AND THAT
TODAY IN THE COMMONS – The House is adjourned until Monday, April 25, 2022 at 11:00 a.m. (EDT).
SUMMIT SERIES LESSONS ON DEALING WITH RUSSIA – In his newly published book, Ice War Diplomat, former Canadian diplomat Gary J Smith takes readers back to the 1972 Summit Series. Mr. Smith was sent to Moscow in 1971 as the second secretary and vice counsel, arriving in February of that year. As the 1972 Summit Series began in Montreal, he was named the Canadian government’s official escort and liaison officer to the Soviet team, and, later, the Canadian embassy point man in Moscow for Team Canada.
The 50th anniversary of the legendary contest saw national hockey teams from Canada and the USSR face off in the eight-game series. Four games were played in Canada and four in Moscow. The final moment of the final game is considered one of the greatest moments in Canadian sporting history.
Mr. Smith was along for the ride as a diplomat working at the Canadian embassy in Moscow, early on in a career that would later take him to postings in such countries as Belgium, Israel and India. (He retired in 1998.) The hockey initiative was part of the foreign policy agenda of prime minister Pierre Trudeau, seeking common ground with the Soviet Union.
Ice War Diplomat (published by Douglas & MacIntyre) tells the story from Mr. Smith’s perspective, and comes amid the turmoil caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a point that Mr. Smith, who now lives in the eastern Ontario town of Perth, was well aware of in an interview with the Politics Briefing newsletter.
Q-How will Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine affect the way your book, Ice War Diplomat, is received?
A- Is this book relevant to what’s happening now in Ukraine? I would say it is because the book tells us a lot about Russia, Russia’s history, Russia’s motivations. People who want to know some more about Russia can find it in the book. In 1972 we were having to deal with the Soviet Union at the time, which was a nuclear state, which was an expansionist power, and had a history of invading its neighbours, Hungary and Czechoslovakia being a couple, and East Germany as well. We had more troops in Europe than we do today. We had more aircraft on the ground We had to deal with the Soviet Union. So I think there are lessons in what we did in 1972 that are applicable to today. Since this is the 50th anniversary of the series, hockey fans will continue to be interested in what happened off the ice and how that legendary series really got going.
Q-What are the lessons in 1972 that are applicable to what we have to do today?
A-I think it’s important that we know that hard power is still here, that you have to have a strong defensive position. I think we were able to deal with the Soviet Union from a position of strength. We had a way to go forward with diplomacy, and to find some common ground. So those are all basic elements of foreign policy. Strong defense, effective diplomacy, and looking for for common ground to reduce the risk of a major war and to see if we can find ways to reach arms control agreements that limit the number of threatening actions.
Q-Why was it important for you to write this book and tell this story?
A-There were 40 to 50 books being written about the Summit Series. None of them really got into the the political and diplomatic side of it. They largely focused on what happened on the ice, and the immediate surroundings of it, but they didn’t have the long view. I had a unique perspective. Instead of letting other people tell my story.
Q-You were in the Canadian diplomatic ranks that offered advice, on Russia, to former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. What advice would you offer the current Prime Minister Trudeau on dealing with Russia given the climate we’re in vis-à-vis the Ukraine?
A-Well, I think [the Canadian government] are pretty much on track right now. We know that Russia is an expansionist power; that they have a proclivity to use military force for their foreign policy. So supporting Ukraine right now is extremely important, not only diplomatically and dealing with refugees, great humanitarian assistance, and reconstruction being needed at some point. But we also need to provide lethal weaponry. Perhaps we could have provided that earlier, but we’re doing it now. I think we need to look at our own defence policy. Are we ready to deal with a hard-power world? Because we have to think not only about Russia, but about China. There are other threats around the world to the security of Canada and Canadians so I think we have to look at how much money we put into defence, and how we put it into defence. The Arctic has been mentioned by many people as an area where the Russians are building up with their Arctic bases and China is declaring itself now an Arctic player. You need military forces to try and stabilize the world. There is the old Roman expression that if you want peace, you need to prepare for war.
The other thing I would say, and I am very happy to see is that we’re continuing to keep our embassy in Moscow, to keep our ambassador there. We need ears, and eyes and a voice at this particular time. It’s easy to say, `Close off the embassies,’ but what you’re doing [if you do that] is closing off your lines of communication and falling back onto megaphone diplomacy where you may feel good about making a statement, but it doesn’t have much impact on the actual face-to-face, and on-the-ground diplomatic work required.
Q-You have referred to hockey as a diplomatic bridge between Canada and Russia. Is hockey finished as a diplomatic bridge given the invasion of Ukraine?
A-The tanks have gone over the hockey bridge, no doubt. What I am watching is whether or not all hockey relations are cut off with Russia. I am looking primarily at the 50 or so Russian players who are in the NHL, playing for Canadian and American teams. Those players are still playing. Fans are still applauding them. As long as the Russian players continue to play in the NHL, I think the possibility of using a diplomatic bridge still exists. The International Ice Hockey Federation world championships are still scheduled for St. Petersburg in the spring of next year. We’ll see whether that’s cancelled like other tournaments have been. But I think hockey, at the moment, still offers a bridge to Russia. But tanks rolling across all bridges can cause them to collapse.
Q-You tell the story in the book about you and your wife learning Russian in a year before you went to Russia as a diplomat. What was that like and did it work?
A-It was a very, very hard grind. You weren’t sitting in a class of 20 or 30 students. It was just the two of us together with a teacher so you couldn’t look out the window, or drift off to sleep. You had to keep at it every hour, every day, every week. For months and months and months. Sometimes my wife would be ahead of me and sometimes I would be picking things up more quickly. It can create tensions in a marriage that way when you’re both learning at the same time, but I think we realized that if she didn’t have the Russian when we went to Moscow, it would make her situation very difficult. We were very, very happy and pleased that we both learned Russian at the same time. She had to take a year off work to do it, but it made all the difference in the world because we could understand what was being said. We could communicate to people, on the streets, in the stores. You could read newspapers and it made me a much more effective diplomat, being able to understand the culture first-hand being able to communicate to the extent you could with anyone in the Soviet population. So it’s something that I think is very, very important in diplomacy, that you engage in a foreign culture and particularly in countries where they are adversaries like Russia, like China, like Iran and so on, that we have diplomats who are professionals, and well-schooled in the language and the culture because that can really provide the eyes, ears and voice to Canadian policymakers, ministers and prime ministers, coming up with what’s the most effective way to go forward.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
THE DECIBEL
On Monday’s edition of the Globe and Mail podcast, Natalie Slyusar recounts what it’s like for a family to cope with the Russian invasion in Ukraine. When your country is invaded, how do you keep your family’s spirits up? In besieged Kharkiv, Ukraine, Ms. Slyusar focused on trying to give her son a regular 16th birthday – complete with a homemade chocolate cake. But baking’s a lot easier said than done while a war rages around you. This beguilingly simple story reveals a lot about how we get ourselves and our loved ones through the hardest parts of life. The Decibel is here.
PRIME MINISTER’S DAY
The Prime Minister is on a “personal” day in Whistler, B.C., according to the itinerary advisory from his office.
LEADERS
No other schedules released for party leaders.
OPINION
Andrew Coyne (The Globe and Mail)on the tangled Web the Trudeau government is weaving: “The Trudeau government, in particular, seems to see the internet not as an opportunity, a chance to stand down the immense regulatory army that has hitherto stood watch over the Canadian media, but as a challenge. Far from packing it in, it is resolved to do more; and the more manifest the flaws in that approach have become, the more its resolve seems to have grown.”
The Globe and Mail Editorial Boardon how Canadian health care needs a lot of reform, and (at most) a little more money: “But Canada also has to recognize that the world’s best health care systems cost less than ours, yet deliver more – shorter waiting lists, quicker access to a doctor when you’re sick, fewer emergency room visits, and fewer appointments cancelled during the pandemic. What can we learn from them, and copy?
Keep universal health insurance. Expand it. But rethink how it’s organized, incentivized and delivered. That’s what our more successful peers did.”
They say it’s coming, one day soon. Both Mr. Trudeau and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland suggested there will be more money when the provinces negotiate a deal. The federal-provincial health care runaround continues.”
Alan Williams (contributed to The Globe and Mail) on whether Canada can really afford the ships and jets that the military has bought: “If insufficient funding is provided to the DND to support the government’s defence policy, the solution is to reflect that reality to Ottawa and force it to modify its strategy – not to understate costs and acquiesce to an unaffordable policy.”
Got a news tip that you’d like us to look into? E-mail us at tips@globeandmail.com. Need to share documents securely? Reach out via SecureDrop.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
