Your question raises a very important piece of context for members of the committee with regard to what was happening on the ground.
As we know, the Taliban was advancing very quickly, much more quickly than anyone expected. As a result, many thousands of Afghans were converging on the airport more or less at the exact same time. Many of them, understandably, were terrified. This caused obvious challenges in maintaining order and the pressure that our armed forces personnel were operating under.
As mentioned in my opening remarks, the government at the time also placed limits on the number of foreign aircraft allowed to land. We were given one specific time—only one—per day that we could utilize to evacuate Afghan nationals. The fact that we had not had a military presence on the ground since 2014 but were, nevertheless, able to bring our aircraft in to evacuate Afghan nationals—and to do so to the amount of 3,700 people—in my mind is absolutely remarkable.
Again, I would like to thank our Canadian Armed Forces for putting themselves in harm's way to sacrifice what they did in order to help evacuate Afghan nationals alongside our allies.