(Ottawa) The Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship of Canada, Sean Fraser, for the first time gave lip service to a deadline for reaching the goal of welcoming 40,000 refugees Afghans formulated in the liberal election platform.
Two years.
But beware: “this is an estimate,” said the minister, recalling that the situation on the ground is highly unstable, and that his intention remains to do everything to accommodate these people as quickly as possible.
“As long as we have the capacity to move anyone faster than what is planned now, we will do it as quickly as humanly possible,” added the new holder of the portfolio.
The pressure on the Minister’s shoulders has increased in recent days. Until now, he had always refused to fix what he called an “artificial date” for the target’s expectation, which is still a long way off.
The Conservatives have also called for the establishment of a special parliamentary committee to examine the Canadian government’s late response to the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in mid-August.
Just over 4,000 refugees arrived in Canada in about four months. The Minister hopes that the pace will increase. He pointed out that this week a chartered plane with approximately 520 refugees on board will arrive on Canadian soil.
And Sean Fraser recalled that the Canadian government must come to terms with a Taliban government that shows no signs of collaboration – and even if they wanted to, they “don’t know how to govern” and “don’t know how to run an airport”.