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Defense Minister Anita Anand said “heartbreaking” for members of the Canadian armed forces who served in Afghanistan to see the Taliban returned to power.
But Anand told the Special Parliamentary Committee on Afghanistan on Monday that the Canadian Armed Forces helped provide a generation of Afghan access to schools, universities, and health care.
He said the intervention, which cost 158 of Canadian lives, also means that fewer women and children died during childbirth and women and minority groups enjoyed freedom and rights for years.
Anand said Canada did not have a plan to recognize the Taliban government, who was registered as a specified terrorist group.
The minister faces questions from parliamentary members in the committee that says humanitarian organizations face difficulties in providing assistance due to the status of the Taliban.
Anand defended Canadian records that evacuated Afghanists and said the military mobilized quickly last year to transport 3,700 Afghan and Canada citizens in Afghanistan to Canada as the Taliban regained control.
Our Canadian armed forces do everything they can help as many people as possible as long as possible,” he said.
Head of Defense, General Wayne Eyre, said that although some Canadian evacuation flights were not full, the others were full of official capacity to issue as many people as possible.
One of Canadian flight captains packed his cargo aircraft, which was designed to carry 200, with 535 people.
Anand and Eyre faced a question about why Canada only evacuated 3,700 people, while England managed to get around 11,000.
Eyre explained that the Canadian armed forces had left the country in 2014 but returned to make a heroic encouragement to evacuate as much as possible after becoming clear Kabul would fall.
Canadian troops arrived in Afghanistan a few weeks after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 by Al-Qaida in the United States and continued the role of the battle there until 2011, when the troops switched to the training of the Afghan national security forces.
