Ottawa Seals Records of Crisis Response, Evacuation Operation Amid Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan

Refugees from Afghanistan and Canadian citizens board a bus after being processed at Pearson Airport in Toronto, on Aug 17, 2021, after arriving indirectly from Afghanistan. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

The federal government is sealing from the public records of its crisis response and evacuation operations in Afghanistan during the Taliban takeover last summer, said an official response to a House of Commons committee report.

“Most of the Government of Canada departments and agencies engaged in the response to the crisis in Afghanistan have undertaken various internal reviews and lessons learned exercises over the course of the past year,” the government said in an Oct. 6 submission to the House of Commons Special Committee on Afghanistan.