Re: Should Canada cover cost of returning citizens from Leba
LARNACA, CYPRUS, BEIRUT, OTTAWA -- Micromanagement by the Prime Minister's Office and a lack of resources in Lebanon contributed to the confusion and anguish at Beirut's port yesterday as Canadians trying to flee Israeli bombardments watched boats chartered by other nations sail away, leaving them behind.
It is expected, ultimately, to be the largest removal of Canadian citizens from a crisis zone ever arranged by the federal government. But, as early as Sunday, there were complaints about delays in arranging ships to carry people to safety, as well as lineups and inaction at the Canadian embassy.
The perception of inaction was exacerbated by the lack of information flowing last week about Canadian efforts to organize a response.
In fact, Foreign Affairs staff realized last week that there was an emergency situation involving tens of thousands of Canadians brewing in Lebanon.
But federal sources say there was an edict handed down by Sandra Buckler, the Prime Minister's communications director, dictating that the situation was to be kept under wraps.
By Saturday, with Canadians desperate to reach safe ground, a task force was put together at Foreign Affairs to find ways to get people out.
Foreign Minister Peter MacKay also decided it was time to talk publicly about the scope of the situation confronting his department.
Two obstacles were blatantly obvious to everyone involved.
First, there were not enough people at the Beirut embassy to cope with the influx of frantic Canadians in need of help -- the number of Canadians registered with the embassy would swell from 10,000 to more than 30,000 in 72 hours.
And second, the only way out was by boat because the Beirut airport had been taken out of commission last Thursday by Israeli strikes.
Canada is accustomed to arranging evacuations by air. Water was another matter. Unlike countries such as Britain and the United States, Canada had no military vessels in the region. And that meant private ships would have to be leased from places such as Cyprus at a time when many other countries were trying to do the same thing.
Canadian officials arrived in Nicosia on Sunday afternoon to set up a command centre in the Cypriot capital and prepare for the evacuation. Canada no longer operates an embassy or even a full consulate in Cyprus, only a small office staffed by a part-time honorary consul, so officials had to be brought in from Ottawa and from Canada's other embassies.
"Well, it's fair to say that some Canadians arrived on Sunday, but only just," said one diplomat involved in the operation.
It was hard to find staff, since huge numbers of Foreign Affairs and embassy staff were on vacation, and many of the embassies were unable to spare workers. Of the approximately 36 people now working in Cyprus, the majority arrived Tuesday or yesterday.
They set up shop in two cramped rooms at the International Hilton hotel, and the staff found themselves cut off from most decisions, unable even to communicate with the local government.
"I haven't heard anything from the Canadians -- they haven't even told us they're here," Homer Mavrommatis, head of the Consular Affairs division for the Cypriot government, said yesterday.
Aside from shortage of staff, the Canadians involved in the operation say they were hampered by another difficulty: the Prime Minister's centralized command and communications policies -- frustrations that were expressed both in the Middle East and in Ottawa.
All decisions had to be made and approved by Ottawa. And, with six time zones between the locations, decisions were often painfully slow.
While other countries were already marshalling large cruise ships on Sunday, Canada spent two days in long-distance discussions before any calls were made.
"It was only 24 to 36 hours ago that we first got in contact with the owners of the ships," one senior official in Cyprus said yesterday.
Most of the ships, very small compared with those used by other countries, were leased from a charter company based in Turkey. Ottawa, citing "security issues," then took a full day to finalize the deal. The number of ships and the terms of the deal kept changing, officials said, as they dealt with increasingly angry families.
On Tuesday night, they realized that the promise they'd made earlier -- that there would be seven boats each transporting two loads of Canadians per day starting yesterday -- could never be met. There wouldn't be seven boats, and it appeared unlikely that even one of them would be able to make it across the Mediterranean by the end of last night.
And the boat owners were extremely nervous about whether Israel, which is blockading the Beirut harbour, would honour any commitment to give them safe passage.
But even as late as yesterday morning, Canadian officials in Beirut were confidently telling reporters that all seven ships were on their way, and that they expected to get 2,000 people out of the country by sundown. Today, they had hoped to be moving something close to double that number.
Far more than 2,000 people showed up at the Beirut port at 7 a.m. yesterday, nearly all of them claiming that they'd been contacted by the embassy and told they had a space on the first ships. The tiny embassy staff was swamped from the start, unable to keep up with the unexpected flood of people claiming they had been guaranteed a spot.
The embassy in Beirut swore it had a contingency plan in place before yesterday. It's standard practice for all embassies to prepare for an evacuation, although operations this large are not something that can be practised.
In Cyprus, Canadian officials said they felt betrayed by Ottawa. Canadian diplomats say the reason yesterday's evacuation was so catastrophically slow is because decisions had to be routed through Ottawa -- and nobody was even at work in Ottawa until midafternoon in Lebanon. "If you want to know where that boat is going, don't ask us -- it's Ottawa driving the boat," one official said, using a line repeated by others throughout the day.
But there were other, serious logistical problems to be dealt with. As many as 40,000 Canadians may need to be removed, and the initial plan of moving them into Cyprus ran into a serious obstacle: It is vacation season on this popular Mediterranean resort island and most hotels and airplane seats have long been booked. Short of dumping them into refugee camps, nothing could be done with the Canadians.
That was why, on Tuesday, Ottawa abruptly switched the target of the evacuation from Cyprus to Turkey, where there are both hotel spaces and the facilities to quickly airlift evacuees to Canada using military or commercial planes.
Still, that switch took Canadian officials in Cyprus by surprise. Yesterday morning they prepared to move the Nicosia operation to Turkey.
Suddenly, last night, they were told the Prime Minister would be visiting and that Canadians -- any Canadians -- would have to be brought to the port of Larnaca, Cyprus. They made an urgent request to the British government, which had been taking Britons on large naval vessels with military escorts to the western city of Limassol, to allow 120 Canadians to board one of the ships so that there would be some available to greet the Prime Minister and ride home on his Airbus jet.
One government official in Ottawa, who asked to remain unidentified, expressed concern that Mr. Harper's decision to fly to Cyprus to offer up the services of the government jet might be perceived by Canadians as a publicity stunt. The government could have sent one of its Challenger jets to Paris to pick up the Prime Minister and his staff, the source said, freeing up more room on the Airbus.
But, even if they had qualms, the Canadian officials quickly booked suites of rooms and offices at the Palm Beach resort hotel in Larnaca, and made the half-hour journey to the port. Joined by newly arrived officials from the PMO, they set up a war room in the hotel's conference centre and were quickly struck by waves of bad news.
First, it turned out that 120 Canadians had not boarded the British vessel -- at most, perhaps 20 were on board. The officials then scrambled to see whether the single Canadian-rented vessel that had reached Beirut, the Lebanese-licensed Blue Dawn, could sail more quickly to Larnaca to meet the Prime Minister.
It quickly became apparent this wasn't going to happen. While Israel had guaranteed Canadians passage, the captain wasn't ready to move without military escort -- and Canada couldn't deliver that. Hours passed. The sun set. And it wasn't until 11 p.m. in Beirut that the ship finally left the dock with 261 Canadians aboard.
But the end was not in sight for the passengers. The trip to Cyprus takes from six to 10 hours depending on weather and the speed of the vessel. And the Israelis were demanding that private ships leaving the harbour, especially those with unfriendly flags, follow an ever-changing and lengthy route from one checkpoint vessel to another, a zigzag that can add hours to the journey. The Canadian vessel, as a Lebanese-flagged ship without military escort, was given the full treatment.
And when the Blue Dawn finally reaches Larnaca to meet the Prime Minister, another set of obstacles was anticipated.
Last night, three very big U.S. ships and a Swedish/Norwegian ship containing 1,500 people arrived, which proved too much for the harbour. One of the U.S. ships was diverted to Limassol, 85 kilometres away. So it may prove impossible, in the wee hours of this morning, for the Canadian ship even to find a slot. It was given a narrow berth, booked at exactly 6 a.m., but harbour officials said yesterday that they had no idea whether the Canadians could be fit in.
Meanwhile, the other six vessels, which had left their home ports yesterday to pick up Canadians, were still floating empty in the Mediterranean. There was hope yesterday that they would make it into the harbour, starting at 6 a.m. Beirut time today. But Israel has said entry will be permitted only one ship at a time.
Foreign Affairs acknowledged yesterday that the one-at-a-time process will greatly complicate the logistics of getting people out of the holding area and onto the ships, increasing the likelihood of chaos at the dock again today.
In and out
Canada is one of several countries scrambling to get its citizens out of Lebanon. Here's how the evacuation race looked last night.
COUNTRY        CITIZENS IN LEBANON        EVACUATED
Sri Lanka         80,000        0
CANADA         40,000        280
Philippines         34,000        0
Australia         25,000        200
United States         25,000        1,500
Britain         22,000        510
France         20,000        800
India         12,000        49
Bangladesh         10,000        0
Denmark         5,000        4000
Sweden         5,000        1,300
Germany         3,000        3,000
SOURCES: REUTERS, ISLAMIC REPUBLIC NEWS AGENCY, INTEGRATED REGIONAL INFORMATION NETWORKS, ASSOCIATED PRESS, BBC, CNN
