$94M for Lebanon rescue, but Canadian evacuee grateful

Last Updated: Friday, November 24, 2006 | 2:05 PM ET

CBC News

The cost of rescuing nearly 15,000 Canadians from war-torn Lebanon has come in at about $94 million — up from a preliminary tally of $76 million — but Charlottetown restaurateur Nawal Abdallah, for one, is grateful the money was spent.

"Canada acted very well," says Abdallah, who was winding up a two-month vacation with her husband, Maroun, when the conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group broke out in July.

Canada's Lebanon evacuation plan, which involved some 15,000 Canadians, including this group listening to embassy officials in July, cost $18 million more than expected.
(Associated Press)

"We were checking our luggage at the airport when it happened," she told CBC News Online on Friday.

It took the couple 10 days to get home from Lebanon during the war between Hezbollah and Israel, but they are not complaining.

The most important leg of the journey — a trip to Cyprus on a Greek cruise ship courtesy of the Canadian government — took just 6½ hours, Nawal Abdallah said. "The ship was great."

The Abdallahs run Cedars Eatery, offering Canadian and Lebanese cuisine, on University Avenue in Charlottetown.

Nawal and Maroun Abdallah recounted their story for CBC News from their Charlottetown restaurant in July.
(CBC)

The evacuation effort, which involved scores of chartered flights and sailings arranged by harried Canadian officials, was criticized by some evacuees, many of whom said they endured heat and chaos on the docks, slow boat rides and sometimes wretched shipboard sanitation.

In Canada, some political and taxpayer groups suggested that thousands holding dual Canadian-Lebanese citizenship and living in Lebanon should not have been eligible for the help.

Nawal Abdallah has some sympathy for that view.

"I think it was money well spent," she said, "but I think people who have lived there for a number of years should not have been evacuated. I think it should have been reserved for people who were on vacation and young people, children."

The evacuation cost was posted on Thursday in Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's 2006 economic and fiscal update. Officials had warned that the earlier figure would probably increase substantially when all the bills were in.