Canadian military planning for evacuation of 20,000 from Lebanon, says top commander

The country's top military commander says contingency evacuation plans have been drawn up to extract roughly 20,000 Canadians from Lebanon should full-scale fighting erupt between Israel and Hezbollah, but those plans are heavily dependent on allied support.

Gen. Wayne Eyre, the chief of the defence staff, made the remarks in a wide-ranging exit interview with CBC News on Wednesday prior to his retirement next month.

«We can't do it alone,» Eyre said. «It will very much be a coalition effort, and we are tightly tied in — very tight — with our allies.»

He noted that in terms of the Canadian government response, Global Affairs Canada is in charge, but allied military leaders who will have to carry out the evacuation met Tuesday to discuss what's available and how it can be done safely.

On Tuesday, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly warned Canadians to leave Lebanon as quickly as possible.

Following a recent conversation between Joly and her Israeli counterpart Israel Katz, Israeli media reported that Canada was considering evacuating up to 45,000 people.

Evacuation plans echo 2006 efforts

The scale of getting noncombatants out of Lebanon is something that preoccupies military planners, Eyre said, noting «the figure that we are looking at is somewhere just over 20,000, and based on historical [data], what we did in 2006.»

Eighteen years ago, over a two week period in July, almost 15,000 people — most of them Canadians — were evacuated from Lebanon after war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah.

Despite the preparation, Eyre acknowledged that he's «very concerned» about the prospect of war between Israel and the Lebanon-based militant group this summer.

Shortly after Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7 last year,