By Canadian Press

‘Nobody’s perfect,’ Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly says as MPs chide Afghan evacuation

Mar 22, 2023 | 3:49 PM

OTTAWA — Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says it was “a messy situation” trying to airlift Afghans who helped Canadian soldiers out of the country when the Taliban took over in August 2021.

Joly told the House of Commons immigration committee that she “can’t turn back the clock” on the government’s chaotic attempts to bring thousands of people from Kabul to safety.

But a senior Global Affairs Canada official, Weldon Epp, told the committee the effort was made more difficult because Ottawa had fewer resources on the ground than its allies, with Canada deciding to close its embassy earlier than some of its peers.

Their comments follow earlier testimony from a senior soldier who said the effort was hampered by a snap election in Canada and botched by a lack of preparedness.

Opposition parties have argued that the government failed to learn from the evacuation.

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Still, Joly insisted that all NATO countries struggled with evacuating Afghan nationals as the Taliban rapidly advanced.

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

Julie Sunday, the assistant deputy minister for emergency management at Global Affairs Canada, said that 200 people working at the department’s emergency response centre were handling thousands of emails at the time.

The volume peaked at 70,000 in one day.

“We had been of course contingency planning for a long period of time,” she said, adding that the demand was overwhelming.

“One of the big challenges with this was the velocity that the crisis hit.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 22, 2023.

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press