Thank you, Mr. Minister, for appearing here today.
As a primary purpose of this meeting here was to discuss the evacuation, I personally want to add my congratulations to your department and to the public servants who worked on this. I think all of us had a chance to interact, whether phoning for particular people to try to locate them, and the cooperation and involvement from the departments involved was just marvellous given the circumstances that were existing at the time.
I wanted to ask one question. With the number of ships that Canada had arranged for to evacuate personnel, were there other ships that were arranged for by other Canadian groups or organizations that might have been there to be able to assist? Were there other Canadian groups or organizations that might have hired ships there too, or were they all organized by the Canadian government?