The number of Canadians registered in Lebanon is nearly 23,000, or four times the amount evacuated by Global Affairs Canada’s past three evacuation efforts in Afghanistan, Sudan, and Haiti combined.
Following an attack by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah on Israel’s north late last month, Global Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly implored Canadians to leave Lebanon while they still have the opportunity to do so.
On August 22, Israel struck more than 10 locations across southern Lebanon determined by the Israel Defence Force to be Hezbollah weapon depots, military buildings, and projectile launchers. This was in response to Hezbollah’s volley of 50 rockets and various drones striking homes in the Golan Heights hours prior.
This past weekend, an Israeli airstrike on Nabatieh, Lebanon, killed 10. Another strike on an arms depot in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley region injured eight. In response, Hezbollah then fired a volley of rockets targeting an Israeli kibbutz and military post, injuring two Israeli soldiers.
Lebanon is the front line of increasing Middle Eastern conflict and possibly an all-out war, with Canadian citizens caught in the crossfire.
“The security situation in Lebanon is becoming increasingly volatile and unpredictable due to sustained and escalating violence between Hezbollah and Israel and could deteriorate further without warning,” Joly said in a news release from June. In it, the minister implied Canadians could struggle to leave the country if Lebanon closed its airports.
If this happened, evacuations by the government of Canada “are not guaranteed,” she said. It has nevertheless been reported that Canada is preparing for evacuations out of Lebanon, the country’s largest since the last Lebanese evacuation in 2006, using a CC-150 Polaris aircraft in the region.
The number of Canadians currently in Lebanon is 22,981, according to the Registration of Canadians Abroad (ROCA) and information provided by Global Affairs Canada to The Hub. But this may only be a fraction of the true number of Canadians in the region.
Global Affairs’ ROCA is a registry service used to catalogue Canadians travelling in other countries and provide Canadian consulate instructions in the event of an emergency. Because it’s voluntary, it doesn’t reflect the total number of Canadian citizens or permanent residents in a given country.
The number of Canadians registered in Lebanon is 4.3 times greater than the 5,243 total people evacuated by Global Affairs Canada during their past three evacuation efforts in Afghanistan (2021), Sudan (2023), and Haiti (2024). Those 5,000-plus total evacuees included Canadian family members of different nationalities and other eligible nationals, according to Global Affairs.
For instance, in 2021 Canada evacuated around 3,700 people from Afghanistan during the U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban’s return to power. Many were Afghans with a “significant and/or enduring relationship with the Government of Canada,” as part of a 13-nation air-bridge. While only 268 Canadians in Afghanistan chose to register with ROCA, 711 Canadian citizens or permanent residents were evacuated during “Operation AEGIS,” according to Global Affairs.
Canadian Armed Forces Members helped assist with the transportation of “Canadian Entitled Persons” from Kabul, Afghanistan, to Canada in aid of Operation AEGIS, on Aug. 23, 2021 in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Canadian Armed Forces.
The number of registered Canadians in Lebanon is also five times greater than the 4,590 ROCA registrants in Afghanistan, Sudan, and Haiti combined. In the two most recent conflicts, significantly fewer Canadians were evacuated than were registered with ROCA.
On April 15, 2023, Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, erupted into intense violence—the result of the country’s failed planned transition from autocratic to democratic rule, closing the country’s only international airport.
Thirteen days later, Canada sent evacuation planes to a Sudanese airbase 30 kilometres north of Khartoum. By that time however, many Canadians in Khartoum had been trapped for days amid horrific violence or found evacuation through other countries like Germany. Global Affairs Canada evacuated only 462 Canadian citizens and permanent residents from Sudan, just over a third of the 1,503 registered in the county.
This year, Canada evacuated 697 people from Haiti. In 2021, its prime minister, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated. The country on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola soon fell to gang rule, resulting in the deaths of thousands. It also meant commercial flights were suspended.
As of March, Canada facilitated travel out of Haiti to the bordering Dominican Republic. Those flights ended in early April, when Minister Joly determined no more were needed. Global Affairs Canada had evacuated 546 Canadian citizens or permanent residents—just a fifth of the 2,819 Canadians registered in Haiti.
In Taiwan, meanwhile, 5,590 Canadians are registered with Global Affairs’ ROCA. There are fears that mounting tensions between China and its Western allies (including the U.S.) over the Asian island’s sovereignty could one day spill into war, putting those Canadians at risk.
During the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006, Canada spent $94 million and used several naval ships to evacuate 15,000 people.
Kiernan is The Hub's Data Visualization Journalist. He was previously a journalism fellow for The Canadian Press and CBC News, where he produced for Rosemary Barton Live, contributed to CBC’s NewsLabs and did business reporting. He graduated from the School of Journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University with minors in global…...
