- Member of Parliament
- Member of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians
- Conservative
- Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $91,173.06
- Government Page
- May/12/22 11:54:45 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, first off, I give my thanks to my colleague for the support of the NDP in this motion.
I would like to give her the opportunity to expand a little bit more on one of the aspects that this committee should be looking at in detail, from my viewpoint, which is the economic impact of and our concerns about global supply chains and the supply chains between Canada and China. I would also like her to comment on the climate change concerns about China being responsible for over 50% of global greenhouse gas emissions and how this is something that the committee should be looking at as well.
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- Dec/7/21 5:55:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I cannot help myself, based on the comments by the member, to interject and give a little of a different perspective.
I agree the mission unfortunately failed. We are seeing the repercussions. However, I am still optimistic about those girls and women who had an opportunity for the better part of two decades to get educated and to live in some semblance of peace and prosperity, which they did not have under the Taliban. I am optimistic that they are going to come back. I predict that one of those individuals who did have that opportunity will be leading Afghanistan in the decades to come.
We cannot just turn our backs, and we cannot avoid getting involved as a nation. Canada is privileged to be one of the few countries in the world that can make a difference. We need to continue to do that. It does need to be a whole-of-government affair. It cannot just be military. We need to continue to focus on helping those who need the help.
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- Dec/7/21 5:26:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is a great question, but unfortunately I do not have the right answer. However, it is definitely something we should be looking at and comparing ourselves to. It is truly important and the member asks a valid question that we should be focused on. It is another issue that this committee could focus on. Ultimately, as some of the previous speakers have stated, the U.S. has some 40,000 Afghans out now, so other countries are obviously doing a lot better than we are.
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- Dec/7/21 5:24:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
The short answer is yes. It was already brought up by previous speakers. Our Globemasters have the capacity to bring out hundreds of people per flight. I think the record was almost 800 on one flight alone, so the capacity exists to get these Afghans to Canada in a much more expedited fashion. This is all about risk assessment. We are not getting them directly out of Afghanistan anymore because the Taliban controls everything. However, as we work with the other solutions that I propose, we can definitely bring more of them to Canada faster.
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- Dec/7/21 5:23:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I mentioned, this committee would be there not only for the urgency and to make sure we identify key ways to move it forward, these are measures that have been suggested to the government already, but are not getting traction. By us shining a light on the problem through the committee process, we are going to attract that.
As I mentioned, another issue is about learning for the future. If we do not learn from what went right and what went wrong and we do not capture that properly and understand where the challenges are across departments, we are doomed to make the same mistake on a future mission and we are going to have a heck of a lot more trouble getting those interpreters and foreign nationals to work with us in future missions.
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- Dec/7/21 5:12:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, considering this is my first speech here in the House in this new Parliament, I want to thank the constituents of Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound for giving me the privilege and honour of representing them here once again. I thank my family, all my volunteers and everybody who helped get me back here to the House of Commons. It truly is a privilege.
Before getting into the details of this motion, I want to thank all the Daves, Coreys, Pauls, Eleanors, retired generals and so many NGOs and charities that have been working behind the scenes on this issue for months now. This includes the Afghan Strategic Evaluation Team, the Veterans Transition Network, the Journalists for Human Rights, the Afghan Canadian interpreters, Building Markets, Aman Lara and Raven Rae Resources.
I also want to thank a former colleague of mine, Greg from Nova Scotia. He has a full-time job running his own business and he comes home at night and spends upward of five to six hours talking to his contacts on the ground in Afghanistan helping get Afghans and Afghan Canadians across the border, facilitating visas and getting them out of that country and to safety. I thank all of these people.
I want to address why this motion and this committee is so important. There are two key reasons and we have mentioned these already during the debate. First is we have to learn what went right and what went wrong. Canada cannot make the same mistakes in the future.
As I mentioned earlier, it is great to identify what went wrong, but if someone does not learn from it and apply it in the future, it is all a waste of time. This is key for any future diplomatic, humanitarian or military mission, regardless of where it is in the world, as we deal with risks. More importantly, we need to do this so that we can help those Afghans who are still in dire need of our support, and are being actively hunted by the Taliban. Their lives are at risk.
To provide some background to the members here in the House who maybe do not know who I am, I spent over 25 years in the military. I spent two deployments in Afghanistan. The first was in 2007 in active combat, where I depended on these interpreters daily in order to communicate, understand the cultural differences and do my job to help give them a better life.
The biggest thing I remember from that tour, more than anything, is talking to the local Afghans. They are no different from any one of us. People around the world are all the same. They just want to live in peace and prosperity, put food on the table and allow their children to have a better life than them. Under the Taliban, women and girls cannot go to school. We should always be fighting against regimes like this, no matter where they are in the world.
My next deployment was in 2012. I did eight months over there with the Canadian contribution to the NATO training mission. We were actually trying to put the hard work in to develop the institutional capacity of that country. Again, it is impossible to do without cultural advisers and interpreters.
We took one of the regional military training centres in Kabul during that deployment and we turned it into a language school. Not to teach them English, but to teach them Pashto and Dari because a lot of the recruits coming through their military or police forces could not read or write to a grade 3 level. It is hard to fight corruption, fraud and other challenges that Afghanistan faces if one cannot communicate.
We had many Afghans who were helping in NATO missions, helping Canadians and helping Canada accomplish what we wanted to do in that country and now we are failing them.
The Taliban are brutal and I am going to get into a specific example momentarily. Again, as my hon. colleague who spoke just before me, the former shadow minister for defence said, this was predicted; we knew this was coming. The former minister of national defence was briefed on the security situation and the probable Taliban resurgence tied to the U.S. withdrawal over two years ago. Former President Trump gave that deadline and indicated that the U.S. were going to withdraw. This was reiterated by President Biden. The Liberal MP, the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River raised these concerns two years ago with the Liberal government.
Let us go back to some of the situations here. I am going to read from a national media article that I wrote on July 22, months before Kabul fell:
Being able to communicate with a population is essential when you are conducting military operations. Without this, it would be next to impossible to ensure the safety of not only the men and women on the operation, but it would have had major consequences for the outcome of the mission.
This is why the local interpreters, cultural advisors, and support staff in Afghanistan were so essential to Canada’s mission.
They enabled us to be more effective, and quite frankly, without them, there would have been fewer Canadians who would have come home.
During my two tours in Afghanistan, I had first-hand experience with these individuals.
In 2007, on combat operations in Kandahar, these Afghans provided the essential real-time monitoring of Taliban radio chatter that provided my combat team invaluable warning of impending attacks, ambushes and insurgent movement. During shuras (meetings with Afghan elders/leadership), they allowed us to communicate, and more importantly understand the cultural nuances that enabled trust and situational awareness. They took on this vital role before, during and post-combat.
I’ll remind the Canadian government, and all Canadians, that the Taliban does not follow international law. During my deployment in 2007, my combat team escorted an Afghan National Army company to Ghorak to reinforce an Afghan National Police outpost. Just prior to our arrival, solely because the boy delivered bread to the police, a local eight-year-old boy was hung, and his father beheaded by the Taliban. While talking with my own interpreters at that time, they shared their own concerns that this is why many used aliases and always kept their faces covered during interactions in order to protect themselves and their families. I share this horrific tragedy to highlight why action must be taken immediately to bring the interpreters, support staff and their families to Canada.
These Afghans faced danger every day in order to help Canada and were willing to give their youth, and their lives for our shared goal of a freer and more prosperous Afghanistan.
These Afghans stepped up for Canada. Now, in their time of need, Canada needs to step up for them
To get to the motion at hand and why this committee is so important, I am going to actually offer a bunch of solutions that this committee should focus on, providing that we get the support for it today. They have come from these NGOs, charities, people and former veterans who are working behind the scenes, as they were shared with me.
Priority one is to stand up an interdepartmental task force focused on safeguarding and evacuating eligible Afghans remaining in Afghanistan. Priority must be on having a single leader to run the interdepartmental task force empowered to coordinate and execute this.
The feedback that I have been receiving is that for GAC and IRCC, during the evacuation operations by our Canadian Armed Forces, interdepartmental communications were not working. Additional resources have to be brought to bear. IRCC staff are being overwhelmed and likely experiencing vicarious PTSD because they do not have the policies, support and leadership to solve the problems.
Another thing that this committee could be focused on is application processing as 45% of the applicants that certain NGOs are tracking still have not had their initiating email to IRCC responded to in order to make that application. Only 20% of those who NGOs believe are eligible have been issued IRCC numbers that suggest that they might be successful.
None of the employees that Canadian NGOs are tracking who work in Afghanistan to advance Canada's mission have been successful in their application to come to Canada under the special immigration measures.
The majority of applicants with approved applications do not have passports. A mechanism needs to be put in place to get these people who do not have passports out of Afghanistan. Applying for a passport at this time can result in a family being targeted and killed.
Next, we need to leverage the charities, the NGOs and the veterans. The Canadian government needs to find a way to leverage our partners and our vets to get biometrics into Kabul. This would allow the government and NGOs to move people out of the country directly without having to accumulate them in third countries.
There need to be less restrictive funding parameters. I understand that this funding needs to be tracked but right now it is too bureaucratic, too complicated to get the help needed as mentioned to support these safe houses and more.
In conclusion, we need this special committee. We need to learn what went right and what went wrong and we need to ensure the appropriate urgent actions are taken by the government. These Afghans stepped up for Canada. Now, in their time of need, Canada needs to step up for them.
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- Dec/7/21 1:26:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will first make a quick correction to something the member on the government side said: 158 Canadians died in Afghanistan, not 159.
The member talked throughout his speech about partisanship and that whole angle, yet he spent more time talking about the official opposition and history than the actual motion at hand, which is the importance of the urgency in taking care of these Afghans who risked their lives to support Canadians. Now we are leaving them behind. He suggested the standing committees as possible solutions to this. However, in the last Parliament, particularly at the defence committee, we witnessed Liberal members filibuster non-stop, and he wonders why part of the motion is to deal with this issue.
Will the member stand up for those Afghans who helped save Canadian lives and vote for this motion, or will he not?
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- Dec/7/21 1:04:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his dedication and service to our country, in particular in preparing our service members to help out in Afghanistan and help Afghans.
He highlighted the risk that Afghans face on a daily basis from the Taliban. I know first-hand the torture and abuse and how vicious the Taliban can be when they take revenge on those they feel do not support their cause.
I would like the member to elaborate further on the urgency of setting up this committee and getting solid recommendations to the government to take action now.
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- Dec/7/21 12:01:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, again, I have one slight correction for the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Jean.
In 2014, things were different. At the time, a lot of Afghans did take the opportunity to seek immigration here to Canada, but the majority of Afghans wanted to stay in their home country, because they felt that they had a future there. They felt that the path was on the right direction. Unfortunately, things have changed most recently.
However, I do believe that we need to focus on the urgency of this situation right now and speak to local NGOs that are working this file, and there are over 10,000 files in their databases of trying to get Afghans to safety. Would the member agree that this is urgent and it needs to be dealt with right now?
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- Dec/7/21 11:44:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague that there is always room for improvement through amendments. I am looking forward to seeing those and hopefully coming to some sort of consensus, if her party wants to put forward amendments.
I would also agree with her that this committee is not just about identifying what went wrong. It is about figuring out what we need to do better for the future. Having ample experience with lessons identified and lessons learned within the Canadian Armed Forces, the key difference is that if we do not actually learn from mistakes made in the past, we can identify them until the cows come home and we will be doomed to make the same mistakes again.
I encourage the Bloc Québécois to work with our Conservative team to come up with an amendment that would work for all of us.
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- Dec/7/21 11:32:01 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think the member will find it easier to respond to my comments if he actually listens to them.
He talked about time and that nobody could have predicted this. He sort of corrected that in his last response, but this was predicted. His own backbencher, the MP for Thunder Bay—Rainy River, raised a concern with the Liberal government two years ago that this was going to come down the pike, so this should have been predicted. I raised it myself in the national media weeks before the government took action.
I will agree with the member. It is the backbenchers' responsibility to stand up and criticize the government at certain times. I am looking forward to members of the Liberal caucus voting for this motion today.
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- Dec/7/21 11:31:15 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a couple of comments rather than a question, and some corrections to make to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
First off, the mission did not end a decade ago. The combat mission ended a decade ago, but we did not leave Afghanistan until 2014.
I would like to correct a few members who keep referring to “Afghanis”. That is the currency in Afghanistan. It should be “Afghans”.
Next, the member mentioned that—
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
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