Hon. Yonah Martin (Deputy Leader of the Opposition): Thank you, minister, for being here.

Minister, tomorrow will mark 10 months since Kabul fell to the Taliban. It’s a terrible stain on our country that Afghans who risked their lives alongside Canadian soldiers and diplomats who are now seeking safety in Canada have not yet received a response from your department almost a year later. On May 12, you told a committee of the other place that everyone would get a response from your department in a matter of weeks to let them know if they will be brought into the special resettlement program or not. You said they would “. . . have an answer in a very short period of time . . . .”

That has not happened, minister. Your office told The Globe and Mail on Monday that more clarity would be provided in the coming weeks. Your government left these Afghans behind to focus on an election no one wanted, and you still can’t help them. How much longer do you expect Afghans living in constant fear of the Taliban to wait?

Hon. Patricia Bovey: Thank you for being with us, minister. My question from Senator Klyne regards the evacuation of interpreters who worked for the Canadian Armed Forces prior to the Taliban seizing control of Afghanistan this past summer.

Canada has faced significant criticism for how it handled the evacuation of those interpreters during the crisis. There is confusion about the process used to determine which employees were evacuated, ongoing concerns for the well-being of those left behind and worries that Canada may have difficulty enlisting the services of interpreters the next time we’re on foreign soil.

Do you share those concerns? What process did your department follow to triage, prioritize and expedite the extraction of Afghan citizens who risked their lives for our Armed Forces?