The Liberal government could have evacuated many more Afghans from the troubled region had it streamlined its cumbersome bureaucratic process and maintained a stronger military and diplomatic presence, former top Canadian military commanders and experts say.
While the Canadian government was able to evacuate more than 3,700 people from Kabul, the number should have been “a hell of a lot more,” said retired major-general David Fraser, who commanded more than 2,000 NATO coalition troops during Operation Medusa in the Afghan province of Kandahar in 2006.
“The international world was surprised by the speed at which the Taliban took over. And [the Canadian government] applied the bureaucracy they had for normal operations,” Fraser said.
Fraser, along with retired major-generals Denis Thompson and Dean Milner are all volunteering to help extract Afghan interpreters from Afghanistan.
They are all former task-force commanders of Afghanistan, and have blamed government bureaucracy for gumming up the system and creating obstacles for Afghans trying to flee the country.
Those Afghans include former interpreters and support staff as well as their families who are now at risk of Taliban arrest or worse for having worked with the Canadian military and other organizations.
‘Bureaucratic clumsiness’
Earlier this week, another retired Canadian general, former chief of the defence staff Rick Hillier told CBC’s Power & Politics that Canada had “not shone greatly” and that the operation had been “so cluttered by bureaucratic clumsiness, bureaucratic inefficiency, bureaucratic paperwork.”
WATCH |Retired general Rick Hillier delivers damning assessment of Afghan evacuation:
‘Canada can do better’: Retired general delivers damning assessment of Afghan evacuation efforts
8 days ago
If the Canadian military isn’t authorized to go outside the Kabul airport to help rescue vulnerable Afghans who are eligible to come to Canada, retired Canadian General Rick Hillier told Power & Politics that Canada “should be ashamed as a nation.” 7:31
He was joined other veterans and advocates who had complained for weeks about Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s handing of the crisis, which included complicated forms for Afghans to fill out, unrealistic and confusing application requirements and complete silence from the department after paperwork has been submitted.
Former lieutenant-general Andrew Leslie, who is also former Liberal MP, also took the government to task, tweeting: “Canada’s poor initial response in Kabul points to an extreme of centralized political micro-management.”
Taliban fighters stand guard at a checkpoint in Kabul on Wednesday, Aug. 25. (Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi/The Associated Press)
This week, Canadian officials announced that evacuation operations had finished ahead of the planned U.S. withdrawal from the country and that no more Canadian-operated flights were planned to take people out of Kabul.
However, Canadian citizens, permanent residents and their families, and those seeking refuge in Canada still remain and that it’s still not known how many potential migrants to Canada are still stuck in Afghanistan. Officials said they have received applications representing 8,000 people and that two-thirds of those applications have been processed.
Some of those applications, said Hillier, would have been difficult to fill out in Canada — “let alone someone in Afghanistan where paperwork is non-existent and identity forms and background stuff is sometimes very difficult or impossible to find.”
‘Nowhere near the numbers’
Milner agreed that the extra paperwork and bureaucracy meant people leaving Afghanistan were “nowhere near the numbers that we would have liked to have.”
“When you’ve got tight timelines, you’ve got to understand what to cut out,” he said. “You’ve got to be able to get to the cut to the chase.”
U.S. Air Force loadmasters load passengers aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III in support of the Afghanistan evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. (U.S. Air Force/Master Sgt. Donald R. Allen/Handout/Reuters)
Instead, Afghans with basic documentation should have just been allowed to be airlifted to third-party locations where they could have been rigorously assessed through the “normal Canadian bureaucratic process,” Fraser said.
Thompson, who has expressed frustration with Ottawa’s handling of the evacuation, told CBC News on Friday that at this stage, with the government airlift operation over, he didn’t feel it prudent to criticize Ottawa for its response.
He said his focus was on the future and securing the passage of as many Afghans as possible.
Still, days earlier, he told CBC News Network about Afghans waiting outside the perimeter of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul and of a family, having dodged Taliban checkpoints, being denied access even though they had documentation and Canadian passports. He said he also heard from families who had been split up: some allowed to go, others denied because of inappropriate paper work.
WATCH | Many of those stranded in Afghanistan feel abandoned by Canada:
Many feel abandoned after Canada stops Afghanistan evacuations
Canada officially ended its evacuation mission in Afghanistan, which carried 3,700 to safety. But thousands are left behind and many feel abandoned. 2:00
Thompson said there was a “bottleneck” at the gate entrance, that there needed to have been a “much more flexible entrance criteria” and that the measures being applied didn’t “even meet the common sense test,” he said earlier this week.
Friday, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau defended his government’s actions, saying the speed with which the Taliban took control of Afghanistan came as a surprise to many around the world.
“I think a lot of people on the ground and around the world thought there would be more time,” he said.
“We accelerated our processes over the past number of weeks and months. We did everything we could.”
Meanwhile, the government has said visas issued to those Afghans eligible to come to Canada will remain valid even if they haven’t left the country yet. It also said it’s waiving immigration paperwork fees for Afghans outside and inside Canada.
No robust military presence to negotiate
The Liberal government has also been criticized for failing to help Afghan interpreters and their families get through Taliban checkpoints to the airport or negotiate safe passage.
“[Canada] had to ask a lot of favours of a lot of other countries because we don’t have a robust military presence there,” former anchor and correspondent Kevin Newman, who volunteers with Veterans Transition Network, told CBC Radio’s The Current.
“Many, many countries have set up a much more robust attempt to get people safely through Taliban checkpoints to the airport,” he said.
When Western embassies closed as the Taliban moved in, many other countries moved their staff onto the airfield.
“But we folded up our entire shop and came home, which would mean that it would be almost impossible to negotiate with the Taliban at that point,” Thompson said.
That meant, without that diplomatic footprint on the ground, Canada was unable to negotiate bus convoys inside the airport, he said.
“All of our allies had eyes and boots on the ground this week at Kabul’s airport. Canada did not. It closed its embassy and withdrew all its diplomats and military by jet to Ottawa just as the Taliban was rolling into town,” Newman recently wrote for Substack.
“The government left no one behind to talk to the Taliban, or our allies, as they organized and negotiated the rescue of thousands.”
Christian Leuprecht, a security expert and professor at the Royal Military College and Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., suggested Canada’s so-called evacuation strategy was to “basically piggyback on the Americans and we’ll try to get as many people out by putting as few Canadian resources at risk as possible.”
WATCH | Trudeau is asked what he would change if he had a chance to do the Kabul evacuation over:
Liberal leader is asked what he would change if he had a chance to do the Kabul evacuation over
20 hours ago
Justin Trudeau spoke with reporters in a Syrian restaurant in the riding of Mississauga-Streetsville in Ontario on Friday. 2:39
“Our footprint was pretty small,” he said. “We didn’t send any troops and equipment that could complement the U.S. effort.”
Lacking political direction
What was lacking throughout was political direction, in part, because the election call meant many of the decision-makers were no longer in Ottawa, said Leuprecht.
“I think basically what the bureaucracy here got was: ‘We’ve got a problem. Go figure it out.’ And this sort of crisis requires clear political direction because the bureaucratic machine is not set up to kind of figure things out.“
With no direction, Canada took the minimalist approach, he said, which meant deploying as few military assets as possible.
“I think that is really sort of ultimately why the Canadian response was sort of relatively muted.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
