Israel close to approving Gaza reunification program before Rafah invasion: Miller

Immigration Minister Marc Miller says Israel seemed to be on the verge of approving a program to get Palestinian relatives of Canadians out of the Gaza Strip before its invasion of the town of Rafah.

«While we have been limited in our success, it is certainly not for lack of trying,» Miller told the House immigration committee Monday.

«We won't give up on bringing family members to safety.»

His comments come amid mounting criticism over measures introduced months ago that were meant to bring relatives of Canadians from conflict zones in the Gaza Strip and Sudan to safety.

Miller announced Monday an increase in the number of applications that will be processed for those leaving the Gaza Strip through that program — but his department isn't sure if any Palestinians have actually arrived in Canada through those means.

The Gaza program initially had a cap of 1,000 applications that could be «accepted into processing,» meaning that all paperwork had been completed ahead of an eventual biometric processing in Egypt. But Miller says 2,903 applications had reached that step as of May 24.

Miller has now expanded that to 5,000 applications, each of which can include multiple family members.

The department says it has issued 179 temporary resident permits through the Gaza program as of April 29, but it isn't known whether anyone has actually reached Canada.

The NDP has accused the government of bungling both the Gaza and Sudan programs, and of not learning from the issues that emerged in resettling Afghans after the Taliban's takeover of Kabul in August 2021.

Relatives in Canada say they were given mixed information from Ottawa about the program, which meant some people missed a chance to get out of Rafah by other means.

A memo obtained