Thank you very much, honourable member Brunelle-Duceppe.
On the 15th of August it was a very chaotic day. When we actually were preparing to leave to go into the airport compound, it was evident that a lot was going on. We could hear explosions. We could see fires all over the city. When we came into the military side of the airport itself, it was very obvious that the city was coming under siege. It became evident to us that a whole bunch of chaotic activity was taking place and that it was going to escalate and grow quite a bit.
Therefore, for us when it came down the question of why not leave anybody behind, at the time it looked like the whole airport was going to be overrun. We saw a lot of military aircraft coming in and off-loading equipment and military personnel, and to us it just seemed to be far too dangerous for us to stay put and leave anybody in harm's way—at least until we could get a sense of what was going to happen to the airport.
As we all saw on the TV, there were two planes after ours where people were hanging off the airplanes and fell. It was quite close for us and I think at the time the decision was the right one to make to pull all Canadians out so we that could actually go back in and continue the effort afterwards.