Joly calls Afghanistan evacuation ‘messy’ as MPs hear of challenges on the ground – National | 24CA News

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly says it was “a messy situation” attempting to assist Afghans escape the Taliban, as Conservatives questioned her division’s determination to put in a plaque commemorating the August 2021 airlift.

“I can’t turn back the clock,” Joly instructed the House of Commons immigration committee, the place she was questioned concerning the authorities’s chaotic makes an attempt to convey hundreds of individuals from Kabul to security.

But a senior Global Affairs Canada official, Weldon Epp, instructed the committee the trouble was made tougher as a result of Ottawa had fewer sources on the bottom, on condition that Canada had determined to shut its embassy sooner than a few of its friends.

“Canada was in a different position than some of its allies,” mentioned Epp, the assistant deputy minister for Asia.

Their feedback comply with earlier testimony from senior troopers who mentioned the trouble was hampered by an absence of preparedness and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s determination to name a snap election.

Canada’s closing commander in Kandahar through the Afghan struggle, retired Maj.-Gen. Dean Milner, beforehand testified that Canada’s embassy employees left “embarrassingly way too fast.”

He had mentioned that’s a part of the rationale “we only managed to pull out maybe about 15 to 17 per cent of those critical interpreters who soldiered alongside us.”

Chief of the defence employees Gen. Wayne Eyre beforehand testified that guidelines limiting authorities work throughout elections restricted the Defence Department’s potential to publicly talk.

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Still, Joly insisted Wednesday that every one NATO international locations struggled with evacuating Afghan nationals because the Taliban quickly superior.

“Nobody’s perfect around this table, and I think we can always do a better job,” Joly instructed MPs on the assembly on Wednesday.

Earlier this 12 months, The Canadian Press reported that Ottawa plans to put in a plaque commemorating the evacuation, primarily based on paperwork obtained by an access-to-information request.

The plaque carries a $10,000 price ticket and was authorized in a July 2022 memorandum that critics argue will ship the mistaken message.

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner requested who had proposed the plaque; bureaucrats mentioned it got here from inside Global Affairs Canada.

Bloc Quebecois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe mentioned his get together had no downside with the plaque.

Opposition events additionally argued Wednesday that the federal government has did not be taught from the evacuation.

Conservative foreign-affairs critic Michael Chong mentioned he worries Canada wouldn’t be capable to evacuate its personal residents from Hong Kong in a hypothetical occasion, corresponding to if China imposed martial regulation.

He took umbrage with a authorities report final October that argued it had “an effective and efficient working relationship” between departments and the army, which he mentioned contradicts the testimony of a number of witnesses.

Julie Sunday, the assistant deputy minister for emergency administration at Global Affairs Canada, responded that her staff managed nicely underneath the circumstances of the Taliban takeover.

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She mentioned the Afghan evacuation prompted extra queries than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the repatriation of Canadians when COVID-19 was declared a world pandemic.

“We had been of course contingency planning for a long period of time,” she mentioned of the Taliban takeover in August 2021.

Sunday mentioned the demand was overwhelming, with 200 folks working on the division’s emergency response centre dealing with a peak of 70,000 emails in someday.

“One of the big challenges with this was the velocity that the crisis hit,” Sunday mentioned, including that she couldn’t converse for the way shortly immigration officers work.

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