Well, Mr. Chair, we communicated immediately with Canadians. We communicated with those most affected--those inside Lebanon, and family members here.
As I mentioned previously, the number of calls was overwhelming, to say the least. In fact, we received over 35,000 calls over the period of time, and as I mentioned, they ramped up from the very beginning. The initial contact we had was approximately 11,000 people--that is, citizens living inside Lebanon. That doubled in the first week and continued to go up in both phone calls and e-mails throughout this crisis.
As for the Prime Minister's involvement, I haven't heard anybody question whether Tony Blair was involved in the British decisions that were made around their evacuation. Of course he was. It's the same for George Bush. Angela Merkel was absolutely involved. And our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, was of course involved in the largest issue of our time, participating at the G8 summit with other world leaders, just as I was involved with my colleagues in the meetings in Rome and throughout this period of time, speaking to them directly via telephone while I coordinated efforts here in Ottawa when this crisis began.