No one in Ottawa will go on the record at this point to talk about the cost of the evacuation of Canadians from southern Lebanon, but we reported Friday that, according to our sources, the cost to date is about $70–million to pull more than 14,000 Canadians from Lebanon to Canada.
That’s roughly comparable to what the U.S. has spent to pull 15,000 American citizens out of Lebanon. The lion’s share of the American bill — about $38 million CDN — has been to charter commercial aircraft. The Americans have spent another 10.5–million CDN on cruise ships and the rest — about $21–million CDN — is the cost of American military equipment and personnel and U.S. State department personnel.
We have not yet been able to get a breakdown of how much Canada spent on planes and ships.