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.
As cross-border attacks between Israel and Lebanon increase, the threat of an all-out regional war with Hamas ally Hezbollah becomes a greater possibility.
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, Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel. Last week, the Israeli army acknowledged it had approved plans for an offensive against Lebanon and that it was only waiting for political approval to begin the operation.
Eyre said a Canadian military team is currently in Lebanon and co-ordinating with the embassy in Beirut in case the worst happens.
“We’ve got another team that will shortly be in Cyprus, dusting off the [evacuation] plan,” the general said, referencing plans made last fall when 500 Canadian troops were ordered to the region in preparation for what was believed at the time to be an imminent evacuation.
The vast majority of those troops returned home, but Eyre says the contingency plans remained in place and now they’re “leaning in” with extensive preparations, including aircraft maintenance.
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Evacuees would take maritime route out of Lebanon
He said most of their plans are based on a “maritime evacuation.” Last fall, Global Affairs Canada rented a large capacity ferry to handle the flow of evacuees from Lebanon.
According to the National Post, the federal government spent $44,000 per week, over a five week period, to have a “high-speed” ship on standby.
Similar to what happened in 2006, the plan would involve evacuating people from Lebanon by sea to the island of Cyprus where they would board flights for home.
In recent weeks, Hezbollah warned the island’s government that it could be a target if it assists Israel in an attack on Lebanon. Some of the militant group’s missiles, notably the Zelzal-2 ballistic missile, has the range to reach Cyprus.
Eyre, however, dismissed the threats.
“We don’t believe those threats are credible,” he said. “And as far as we know, there’s no plans [by the Israelis] to use Cyprus as a base for offensive operations — or for any operations from any of the belligerents.”