Canada ended its evacuation flights of Canadian citizens in Sudan over the weekend, an extraction effort that one expert says amounted to a “last ones in, and first ones out” approach.
Christian Leuprecht, a professor at the Royal Military College and Queen’s University, said “Canada has been playing it exceptionally safe, if you compare to how quickly the French moved in, how quickly the Germans moved in, the Brits, and of course, the Americans.”
Violence broke out in Sudan April 15 due to a power struggle between two factions of the country’s military regime. Canada has finished six evacuation flights that began last week, the last of which took place on Saturday, National Defence Minister Anita Anand said Sunday.
Those six flights evacuated nearly 550 people, while around 400 Canadians and permanent residents have been evacuated on both Canadian and other countries’ flights. Anand said there are another 230 Canadians still in the country looking for help and information from Global Affairs Canada.
Daniel Minden, a spokesperson for Anand, said in an email: “Our highest priority remains the safe return of Canadians who wish to leave Sudan, and we are doing our utmost to make that happen.”
“Canada and our allies coordinated closely to evacuate as many people as possible from Wadi Seidna Airfield for as long as possible, but because of the dangerous conditions and in concert with decisions made by our allies, no further Canadian flights from Wadi Seidna Airfield are planned.”
Minden said the government is working to find other departure options and “to plan with our partners for air, ground, and seaport extraction options including from Port Sudan.” He said the Canadian Forces ships HMCS Montreal and MV Asterix are in “close vicinity.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly has also travelled to Kenya, where she has met with evacuated Canadians and diplomats, as well as representatives of other countries in the region.
Experts say there is also a larger pattern to such non-combatant evacuations by Canada, including the effort in Afghanistan when the Taliban regained power in 2021.
Leuprecht said Canada made a comparable effort in Sudan as it did in Afghanistan, in that “Canada’s taking an extremely cautious approach.” Both countries are also similar in that Canada didn’t have much in terms of assets on the ground in either country.
The Canadian Armed Forces have the mandate for these types of non-combatant evacuations, but the problem is that the military is “so exceptionally short on people and on assets” that means “something else is going to give,” he said.
The Liberal government “clearly wants to make sure that nobody’s going to get hurt, let alone have a Canadian soldier come back in a body bag in that sort of operation.”
He said the response “shows we can still get some things done.” But Leuprecht said broadly speaking, Canada’s reach internationally “when things go to hell in a handbasket” is “extremely limited.”
“We simply don’t have the capacities, we don’t have the people and we don’t have the political will.”
Richard Shimooka, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, said examples like Afghanistan and prior to that, the effort to evacuate citizens from Lebanon in 2006, show a lack of pre-planning on the government’s part.
“And so when we are confronted with these situations… the government has to kind of work on the fly to get things done.”
He said “Canada has a track record of not being the first there or when we do, we just we don’t have enough people on the ground.” In Lebanon, the government was “completely overwhelmed” by the numbers of people who needed help.
Usha George, director of the Toronto Metropolitan University Centre for Immigration and Settlement said Canada is exposed to such situation not only due to immigration but also because Canadians work and travel in different countries as well.
“It’s quite likely that in those parts of the world, there will be Canadian citizens of a particular origin, whether it is Lebanon or Afghanistan or whatever it is, Canadian citizens themselves who are born and brought up here, also probably go there to do business and do all kinds of other things,” George said.
She said situations where Canada has to evacuate citizens from crisis zones are part of “a global process of migration that’s happening.”
There were only about 700 people on the Canadian government’s list of affected people in Sudan, officials said last week. But a situation where Canada would need to put in a much larger evacuation effort is possible—in 2020, for example, the government drew up plans to evacuate 300,000 Canadian citizens from Hong Kong.
Almost one-quarter of Canadians are or were previously either landed immigrants or permanent residents, according to Statistics Canada. Anna Triandafyllidou, a professor and Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University, said “if someone is foreign born or their parents are foreign-born, it’s obvious they would have more networks in other countries.”
She said situations where Canada has to evacuate its citizens from crises in other countries are “a testimony on one hand to how the world is interconnected, and also to the fact that Canada looks after its citizens.”
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