{"id":509684,"date":"2026-03-02T15:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T15:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/509684\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T15:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T15:44:08","slug":"ottawa-boosting-support-but-warns-canadians-in-middle-east-to-prepare-contingency-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/509684\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa boosting support, but warns Canadians in Middle East to prepare contingency plans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a style=\"display:block\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/resizer\/v2\/QPZS4X5TEJG2TBYYQ5DHRZ5XAI.JPG?auth=d720738839024c9972fe2d29275c0bf6619e0867318872dba6e02fe1b60fd4a8&amp;width=600&amp;height=400&amp;quality=80&amp;smart=true\" aria-haspopup=\"true\" data-photo-viewer-index=\"0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"figcap-text\">Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand speaks with reporters at Canada&#8217;s High Commission in New Delhi on Monday. Ms. Anand says consular services are focused on prioritizing essential services as processing travel documents.Adrian Wyld\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">Global Affairs Canada is increasing staff to help Canadians caught up in the Middle East conflict but also urging them to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">In a statement issued Monday morning, the department said its ability to provide consular services to Canadians during an active conflict is limited. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">The priority is given to providing such essential services as processing travel documents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text mv-16 l-inset text-pb-8\" data-sophi-feature=\"interstitial\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/world\/article-iran-us-israel-hezbollah-trump-ayatollah-ali-khamenei-live-updates\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Live updates: Middle East war widens as Israel strikes Hezbollah; instability hits markets<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">\u201cIf you are in an affected country, prepare contingency plans that don\u2019t rely on the Government of Canada\u2019s assistance for departure,\u201d said the statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">The statement said the department is not aware of any Canadians who have been killed or injured owing to hostilities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">It advises against any travel to Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as well as non-essential travel to Jordan, Oman and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">The department says it is deploying members of its standing rapid deployment team, who are trained to deal with emergencies, to the region, and adding surge capacity to the 24\/7 Emergency Watch and Response Centre for operations in Ottawa.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">According to the advisory, more than 85,000 Canadians and permanent residents in the region have registered with Global Affairs Canada, with most in Lebanon \u2013 23,165 \u2013 and the United Arab Emirates, 23,064.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">There are 10,948 in Saudi Arabia, 8,234 in Qatar, and 7,238 in Egypt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">There are 2,932 in Iran and 6,006 in Israel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand speaks with reporters at Canada&#8217;s High Commission in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739,714],"class_list":["post-509684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}