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| Carla Potter |
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| Ardy Mohajer |
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| Hugh Meighen |
Canada had pledged to accept 40,000 Afghan refugees, but only 3,000 had been evacuated. The haste with which the withdrawal had to be conducted had left many with connections to Canada stranded in a situation that was becoming increasingly dangerous — particularly for lawyers, judges and others involved in the legal system — who the Taliban perceived to be enemies of their regime.
Saeeq Shajjan, a Harvard-educated lawyer and founder of Shajjan & Associates — a full-service firm in Kabul that had acted for the government of Canada and supported Canadians in diplomatic and humanitarian missions in that region — had managed to escape the chaos as a refugee and had resettled in Toronto. He was trying to get members of his firm to safety in Canada, as well as to assist a number of colleagues, judges and government officials whose lives were under very real threat.
After hearing Saeeq on the radio discussing the unfolding crisis in Afghanistan, Kristin Taylor, managing partner at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, contacted him and made a commitment to assist those abandoned in Afghanistan find refuge in Canada.
In tandem, BLG was working on a national pro bono partnership with a Toronto-based human rights and immigration firm, Landings LLP. The purpose was to use Landings’ referral network and refugee expertise together with BLG’s national resources to rapidly identify, prepare and assemble applications for vulnerable Afghans, and particularly those that assisted the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, seeking evacuation under the government’s special immigration measures.
The lawyers at Cassels and BLG recognized that despite the urgency of the situation and Canada’s commitment to resettle 40,000 Afghans, the process to meet this promise was slow and frustrating.
Cassels, along with other members of the legal community, joined various community and professional organizations in advocating for those vulnerable Afghans that had been left stranded. Meetings with various government officials and public interest groups were held. Unfortunately, the message often received was that the commitment to admit 40,000 Afghan nationals under the Special Immigration Measures (SIM) Program was lofty, and an administrative exercise for which there were simply not adequate resources. The number of applications processed per week was devastatingly low.
At Cassels, an intense letter-writing and phone-call campaign to members of Parliament to bring attention to this issue began. In over hundreds of letters and calls, government officials were asked to honour Canada’s public pledge to accept vulnerable Afghans into Canada and to ensure that the individuals who had provided direct assistance to the Canadian government and met the admission criteria of the SIM Program, such as those individuals at Shajjan & Associates, were going to have their applications processed.
Provincial bar associations across the country asked their members to write to their local MPs, and a number of other large law firms across Canada amplified our voice. There was a tangible understanding in the legal community of the danger these people are in, a true desire to help, but a pervasive frustration with the lack of progress.
It was through this advocacy that BLG and Cassels, together with leaders at Dentons, realized that one firm alone could not move the needle to clear the immigration backlog and get our Afghan colleagues to safety. Realizing that collectively the legal community in Canada could do more together than one firm alone and under the leadership of BLG, Dentons and Cassels, 21 Canadian firms came to write an Open Letter calling on the government of Canada to fulfill its promise — effectively, efficiently and without delay — so that vulnerable Afghans can re-start their lives in peace and security.
The Open Letter points to three important steps that the government of Canada must take now to make their promise a reality:
- Devote dedicated government resources to review and rapidly determine the accumulated backlog of applications by Afghans for resettlement in Canada;
- Co-ordinate the work of officials across government by creating a committee of Cabinet and consult extensively with Canadians who are knowledgeable about the situation “on the ground” both here and in Afghanistan; and
- Tailor Canadian resettlement policies and programs to the circumstances of this crisis.
It has been five long months and the lack of progress has been disheartening, but we are buoyed by the way the legal community has rallied to assist, and remain hopeful that this combined advocacy will play a critical role in assisting those escaping a life-threatening situation in Afghanistan.
Time is of the essence.
Carla Potter is a banking & specialty finance partner at Cassels and Ardy Mohajer is a partner in the real estate & development group at Cassels practising real estate and property development law. Hugh Meighen is an international arbitration lawyer and partner at BLG.
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