Mr. Chair, during that time, we were proactive. Because the situation on the ground was deteriorating, a request came from Global Affairs Canada. I, as the minister of national defence, could not authorize troop deployments into a country. There had to be a request. Once a request was made, it was authorized the very next day.
Our troops went into theatre to do the assessment and, because of the team we had on the ground, they were able to start assessing the situation. We were monitoring things literally daily. That allowed us to pivot some of our work that we were doing for the evacuation as well.