The Plight of Temporary Canadians

Because of terrorism that Hezbollah, Party of Dog, launched from their chunk of occupied Lebanon, Lebanon is a war zone. This has resulted with great clamor for countries to extract their stranded citizens. Many countries have 10's of thousands passport holders in Lebanon. Australia has 10's of thousands of "well behaved" Aussie passport holders in Lebanon. Canada has 10's of thousands of passport holders in Lebanon. However most of "Canadians" in danger are dual citizens. These are people who spent three or four years in Canada at some point in their lives. These are Lebanese with Canadian passports. Garth Turner, the Conservative member of Halton has been asking questions about the cost of rescuing Lebanese from Lebanon. There has been a change of policy. Most countries, most of the time will rescue their citizens in distress, billing later for the travel costs. The Canadian evacuation OTOH will be gratis.

The Current, 2006/07/20 discussing this topic.

Update: According a report on The National, 37,000 people are registered for evacuation with the Canadian Embassy.