Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration

Comité permanent de la citoyenneté et de l'immigration

For immediate release

Ottawa, November 05, 2024 -

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration today delivered a letter to the Honourable Marc Miller, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, calling on him to lift the 40,000 cap on his department’s special programs and measures for Afghan refugees and vulnerable Afghans.

This letter follows the committee’s study of the Government of Canada’s response to the final report of the House of Commons Special Committee on Afghanistan, entitled Honouring Canada’s Legacy in Afghanistan: Responding to the Humanitarian Crisis and Helping People Reach Safety, tabled in 2022. More than three years since Canada’s departure from Afghanistan, the committee remains concerned about the untenable situation for many Afghans living under the Taliban – some of whom are persecuted because of their past service to Canada and Canadian-funded agencies.

Over the last year, Canada has met its public commitment to welcome 40,000 Afghan refugees – people uniquely at risk to Taliban persecution because of their human rights work, vulnerable minority status, or because they or their families worked with Canada. The minister assured the committee that “the taps will not be shut off” at 40,000. The most recent published numbers show that Canada has welcomed 54,730 as of 4 November 2024.

However, there are still Afghans who served the Canadian government, to whom Canada is deeply indebted, and who are in danger from the Taliban as a direct result of this work. The committee emphasizes that the families of these former staff are also targeted and must be given the opportunity to resettle in Canada. While many of these Afghans have already been vetted by the Government of Canada, the committee has heard that they cannot apply because Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has “received enough applications to fill all spots” for the Special Immigration Measures Program for Afghan nationals (and their families) who assisted the Government of Canada. The committee outlined in its letter to the minister that while IRCC may allow new applications in the future, it is concerned that the Government of Canada is no longer prioritizing these Afghans. If the taps are still on, the flow of applications has been reduced to a trickle.

Among its other recommendations, the committee’s letter reiterates the Special Committee on Afghanistan’s recommendations that the Government of Canada continue to insist that girls and women throughout Afghanistan have permanent access to all levels of education, and that IRCC create an emergency immigration mechanism ready to be deployed in the event of future humanitarian crises.

The committee also calls on the government to protect the integrity of future special immigration measures by making sure that the authority to issue official government documents be properly delegated. During its study, the committee heard that Senator Marilou McPhedran obtained templates of “facilitation letters” and sent them to vulnerable Afghans who had not been vetted by Canadian departments. Questions regarding who authorized the use of the facilitation letter template remain unanswered. While the committee recognizes the complex, ever-changing, and urgent emergency that defined the August 2021 evacuation, it asks IRCC, in future, to provide officials with clear instructions on how to deal with facilitation letters, while being respectful of due process.

The study’s briefs and testimony can be consulted on the committee’s web page on the Parliament of Canada website.