Shame on Ottawa for Inadequate Help for Those Afghans Who Helped Us
Canadian media has done a terrific job in advocating for those Afghan interpreters, drivers, guards and others who were so valuable to Canadian diplomats and journalists before the Taliban took over and are now being hunted by them. They regularly are interviewed from Afghanistan where they hide, and their fear, and the apparent indifference of their plight trying to get them or their families to Canada is palpable.
The government’s grand promises made to this group and their families have not been kept. Recently, an interpreter, lucky enough to be in Canada who was before a Parliamentary Committee on Afghanistan, described many of the promises made by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) related to bringing their families over as misleading. He said that Afghan interpreters were once heroes to the government of Canada, but that today, “they are zeroes because they are stressed, depressed, panicking and mentally unstable due to the lives of their families and their loved ones.”
One hundred former interpreters rallied in March in Toronto and recently staged a hunger strike in Ottawa to pressure the government to move on family reunification under a new policy announced in December. Over 300 families are waiting to flee, and have filed applications, but none have heard from Immigration Canada.
Sean Fraser, the young earnest immigration and refugee Minister, wore a lot of egg on his face recently when Vassy Kapelos of CBC’s Power and Politics told him of the dire situation of an interpreter’s family then read a heartless bureaucratic letter he received. Fraser was somewhat sympathetic but simply repeated the government’s mantra that they were committed to resettling 40,000 Afghans, of which nearly 11,000 were already here.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, more than 50 former Canadian embassy security guards received an auto reply acknowledging their application in early August, but have heard nothing since. Veterans writing letters of reference for Afghans have had the same experience. And now a major advocacy organization, the Veteran’s Transition network, announced recently it is giving up its efforts to help this group, given onerous paperwork and the difficulty the government was having helping them get out of the country.
It took a former MP and retired general, Andrew Leslie to really bell the cat. In a Globe article he blames the visa delays and bureaucratic roadblocks on Justin Trudeau. He said the Prime Minister has failed to step in and order the process streamlined, as he did for Ukrainian nationals.
As a former PMO staffer, I know that a call from a senior aide of the PM to the Minister to solve this issue would get things moving. It likely has not been made.
Patrick Gossage Insider Political Views
