The Decibel - The bureaucratic mess that’s left Afghans stranded

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

Back in September, we told you about some Afghans trying to flee the Taliban in 2021 who had been given Canadian travel documents – but they were not authentic. We now know that a Canadian Senator sent approximately 640 of these documents to Afghans, who are now stranded.Today, The Globe’s senior parliamentary reporter Marieke Walsh tells us what we know about who’s involved in this bureaucratic mess, and the impossible situation for the people who received these documents.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Back in September, we learned that some people who were trying to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban took over in 2021 were given Canadian travel documents to help them get out to safety. But these documents were not authentic. They came from the office of Canadian Senator Mary Lou McFedren. What I did know in those days, and they were only days, that we were working to get women, mostly women and their families, out, was that we had no time. Hundreds of Afghans who received these documents are still stranded. What's at stake here is whether a senator's office went rogue

in issuing Canadian documents to Afghans or whether in some way she was authorized by the federal government to issue the documents and whether the federal government now needs to honour those. Marika Walsh is the Globe's senior parliamentary reporter. Today, she tells us what we know about who's involved and the impossible situation for the people who received these documents. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Marika, thanks so much for being back on the show.

Thanks so much for having me. So to start, just remind us what we're talking about here. What exactly are these documents? So at the heart of this is what been granted a visa to enter Canada and asks that this person be granted safe passage to the airport in Afghanistan in order to get out of Afghanistan. And the documents were not in themselves visas, is what the government says. The government was using these documents to get people who were part of their resettlement

programs safely to the airport to get people who were part of their resettlement programs safely to the airport to get out of Afghanistan. But even though it said they had a visa, it didn't actually mean that that document was a visa. The hitch is that when these documents were being issued or distributed through the senator's office, it wasn't made clear that that was the case. And so the people who received these documents from the senator's office believe that in receiving them, they had a ticket to Canada. Okay, so these were documents that were given out in the summer of 2021, after the Taliban had regained control of Afghanistan. So, Marika, can you just remind us, what was it like in the capital, Kabul, at that time? What were these documents meant to do in that situation?

That's a really important scene setter, I think, because if you go back two years ago, people were in really desperate straits. The NATO allies, Canada and other Western countries really failed in their promise to the Afghans who worked with the diplomatic and military missions over the many years in Afghanistan, who were promised safe harbor in their new countries if they worked with these allies during the war in Afghanistan. And so when the Taliban are taking over in the summer of 2021, all of these allies are scrambling to make good on that promise and desperately running out of time.

That is compounded in Canada by the fact that on the day that Kabul fell to the Taliban, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called an election. So a lot of the resources that are usually in the federal government were sucked out and put onto a federal campaign. And opposition critics and opposition parties say that that really further hampered an already challenged effort to save Afghans who were vulnerable to the Taliban. OK, so so let's talk about the people that are stuck in the middle of this now. So who received these documents? So the senator says that her office sent these documents to vulnerable Afghans, primarily women, who were at risk of Taliban oppression or abuse because of what they were doing in Afghanistan. So primarily, these were athletes, women's rights advocates, people who were advocating for women's equality. This is what the senator says. And it's borne out by at least some

of our reporting that has shown, for example, that the international soccer governing body FIFA was involved in getting these letters to people that they were sponsoring and helping to get out of Afghanistan. And they are among the hundreds of Afghans who receive these letters and are now stranded because of it. We also know, and this is what we reported when this first started in September, that there was a family who was related to somebody in Michelle Rumpelgarner's riding in Alberta. And they also received that letter. They were stranded in Afghanistan because of it, but have now actually been able to get to the United States.

Okay, yes. And we did have you on in September, we talked about that family, because that was kind of one of the first situations where we were learning about what was happening here. I want to ask you about the people that FIFA, the world soccer body, was trying to get out. Where are they now? So what happened is that hundreds of people got these documents from the senator's office. She says that they helped save lives. And what happened is that some of the people who received the documents remain stranded in Afghanistan. Some remain stranded in third countries and some have been resettled by other countries. So the documents did help some of them actually get out of Afghanistan.

They're stuck elsewhere now. Yes, exactly. And in the case of FIFA, what happened is that they were able to evacuate about 150, just over 150 Afghans in the fall of 2021, fall and summer of 2021. And they arrived in Qatar. And once they got to Qatar, they found out that the documents that they thought would get their sponsored Afghans to Canada actually were virtually worthless to the government of Canada. And because of that, they had to find some other form of temporary residence for these Afghans and ended up sending them to a resort town in Albania. And these Afghans have been living at a hotel in Albania ever since. Wow.

Do we know how many documents were actually sent out then? How many people got these documents? So we've learned a lot more since we first talked last fall through two court cases. And in those court cases, in an affidavit that the senator filed, she says that her office issued about 640 of those documents. I will say, though, when she was asked how many documents her office either distributed or helped to distribute when she was at committee a few days ago, she did not repeat that number and said that she didn't actually keep track of that. But you did not keep track of how many facilitation letters that came out of your office? I did not keep close track, no. So Marika, we spoke with you in September

about all this. And back then, we didn't know how Senator McFedren got these documents. What have we learned about that since then? Yeah, at the time, she said that she and her office received the document from a high-level official, but she wouldn't say who, and there was no way for us to verify it. Since then, in testimony that she's given at the House of Commons Immigration Committee and comments she's made in the Senate and in an affidavit she's filed in court, she She spelled out much more of those details. And what we've learned is that in that time, in August of 2021, she and her office were in heavy communication with the federal government and the officials who were still operating in the minister's offices. And at one point, one of the people working with her emailed to say that there was a group of vulnerable Afghans outside of the airport and they couldn't get in. And what were they missing? She said, there's a document that people are talking about, you know, what do they need to actually get in? And in response to that,

George Young, George Young at the time was the chief of staff to Harjit Sajjan. Harjit Sajjan was the defense minister at the time. He sent her a document that said he had received from Global Affairs Canada. When George Young sent me the facilitation templates on August 25th, he wrote, and I quote, I have received this from a colleague at GAC. Try it, George. And that document is the facilitation letter. Okay. And so Mr. Young sends this template to Senator McFedren's office and says, try it. He doesn't add any other specificity around what try it means and what the document means, what the actual purpose of the document was.

OK, so Senator McFedren's office gets these documents. Then what do they do with them? So they received the document. And what they did is they added the names on themselves of the Afghans that were in communication with them who were trying to get out of Afghanistan. On top of that, her office sent the template to what McFettering calls other trusted advocates to then also use the template to add on other names that they believed needed to get out of Afghanistan. And she says she then retroactively would send lists to the government to say who she had issued these documents to. And that's how this kind of spiraled from a few people trying to get into the airport to now hundreds of Afghans with these

documents that the federal government says were not authentic and they won't honor, but that the senator and other groups say the Canadian government should be honoring because the senator believes that she received the document legitimately and used it in good faith. Madam Chair, these facilitation letters came from the Chief of Staff to the Defense Minister. IRCC was sending facilitation letters with the same content to also help vulnerable Afghans escape the Taliban. I trusted then, and I do now, the facilitation templates which Mr. Young provided.

I trust them to be authentic. And they helped save many lives, mostly women. We'll be back in a minute. Okay, so it sounds like Senator McFedren was given a template. She then filled out the names of the people who would receive these documents and then send a list to the government of those names. Is this a normal process in any way? Is this how things would happen? No, it's not a normal process. And

the federal government actually says it's not possible for a parliamentarian to be authorized to be issuing federal government documents because there's a separation of powers in our constitution that prevents legislators from holding these executive powers. And I just don't want people all around the world to think that a Canadian parliamentarian has made a promise to them while they are vulnerable and are in a dire situation. Can you comment on that? The letters that were conveyed via my office came from Global Affairs Canada. If there were any promises made, those promises were made by the government of Canada. So it's not the normal process.

The normal process, though, was very broken at that time. And the senator says... Yes, in an extreme humanitarian crisis, in a huge emergency, that's not when bureaucratic processes should triumph. The challenge is that the opposition parties say, well, what had happened or what would have happened if all MPs in Canada or senators in Canada were sending out documents saying that people had been granted visas to come to Canada? And what if it had been happening at a larger scale? All I'm trying to say, Senator, is like,

none of us would ever do this, regardless of political strike, because we understand the division of powers and because of the danger that it can pose to soldiers. There's equity issues. In addition, they say... How did the people you select, how were they more deserving than other people that were on the government list to get? How did you determine that? I didn't determine that. I was doing what I could with the resources I had.

At the same time, you know, one woman I spoke with this week says that she believes the senator did the right thing. This is somebody who is working with an NGO who's supporting some of the female athletes who are in Albania. And she says nobody else was helping. And these people, despite the limbo they have been living in and the lack of certainty they have been living in, have been able to get out of Afghanistan and have hope for opportunity that they wouldn't have had otherwise. Yeah. What remains to be seen and why this is so important and why House of Commons Committee

is investigating this is because the question is, did Harjit Sajjan's chief of staff operate with the knowledge of federal cabinet ministers? And who knew at that time what was happening? And if it was sanctioned, then why isn't Canada honoring this? Marika, what has Senator McFedren said about what exactly she was told by people in the government who sent her the documents? Like, was she authorized in any way to do this? So because George Young is the chief of staff and the top advisor to Harjit Sajjan, the question is then, what did that minister know about this? And in testimony to the Immigration Committee on Wednesday, he said that he didn't authorize the issuing of the facilitation letters through the senator's office and that he didn't know that she was doing that.

Minister, can you advise the committee? Were you aware of these facilitation letters? Yes or no? I was not aware of Senator McFedren with disseminating facilitation letters. OK. But at the same time, he told MPs that he wasn't checking his email in August and September of 2021. At that time, we were getting obviously lots of emails at the time. I wasn't reading my emails. I do get lots of emails and probably cc'd on them. But as I told

members of this committee, I was focused on the operational aspects of the mission at that time. So at the time you were busy, but since that time, it's now been some time since that fateful date. Can you advise, have you gone back to look at any of your emails? No, I have not. You have not. And so that raised a lot of questions

from opposition MPs. The NDP called it a sign of incompetence. The conservatives said it was preposterous and sort of a dog ate my homework excuse. And he has now said that he will go back to his email and look to see whether there's anything in there that he can present to the committee. Wow. So we don't really know, it sounds like, how much the government knew or didn't know really about what was going on here. Is that right? That's exactly it. And that's why the MPs on

the Immigration Committee are trying to pursue this because it changes the context in which this is happening. And there are now court cases that have been launched to try and force the government to honor the documents. And so it's now a question for the courts to answer or to decide whether or not they actually are authentic. Because in the court case, the lawyers argue that Senator McFedren was delegated authority because she was given the template letter. But it's now an open question as to how that will be decided. Yeah, it sounds like these court cases about these documents, they're arguing that these documents should let them into Canada. But the government says these documents are not visas themselves. So I guess why do they think these documents should get them into the country?

That is in part because of what the document says that the person named, you know, if you took a document that says the person named has been granted a visa to come to Canada, please allow them safe passage. If you're a layperson, you think that means I have a visa. Right. And Michelle Rumpel-Garner says even she believed that that's what that meant when she saw the documents. This letter, it states the Canadian government validates that the names identified below have been granted a visa to enter Canada. I've been on this committee for seven years at the time. I was the vice chair. I was the critic. This fooled me in thinking that they could get into Canada. So it's a bit of that. It's also that one of the consultants who was working with Senator McFedren at the time

told somebody in an email, and we don't know who that person is because their name is redacted, but told somebody that the documents would allow the people on them to enter Canada. I wonder, like, could – there's a lot going on here. There's a lot of people in really difficult situations, Marika. Like, could the Canadian government maybe just make an exception here and let people in who receive these documents? Well, we'll have to see what happens in the court case, right? First of all, they might be forced to. I think when you look at the challenging situation the government's in,

if the government was to say, yes, we'll let these people in, they have no way of knowing what the ceiling on that is because they don't know how many other people have this. And they don't know whether, for example, more people could create them because they've made that promise. Right. Yeah. Because the senator didn't keep track of how many documents were being made or whose names were on it. I mean, the government wouldn't really know what it was promising then. And it also wouldn't know the number. It also wouldn't know who it would be letting in then as well. Yeah, exactly.

Marika, just I guess bigger picture here. What does all of this say about the government's handling of the situation in Afghanistan and the people trying to get to Canada? I think it just underscores how problematic the rescue efforts were. Yes, people have gotten out. Canada has now settled over 30,000 Afghans. But at the time, and still today, advocates say they didn't understand the process and it is not clear how the government decided who could get in and who couldn't. And the question is then, was there sort of favoritism at play, for example, that Senator McFedden could use this document and select people, but nobody else could. Other people are going through this bureaucratic process that people say is too complicated and difficult to navigate and also far too slow because we know many people weren't able to get out in time. When it comes to the point made earlier by an advocate that, you know, Senator McFedden was helping while nobody else was. Michelle Rumpelgarner says, well, that just raises more questions about what the government was doing. Why is it that a

process was so inadequate that a senator believed that they had to do this? Marika, thank you so much for taking the time to explain all this today. Thanks so much for taking the time to explain all this today. Thanks so much for having me. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wellms. Our intern is Andrew Hines. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrienne Chung is our senior producer. And Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you next week.