The voluntary evacuation was launched for a period of one month, from mid-December to mid-January. It was an attempt to document people as quickly as possible so that they could benefit from existing commercial options to leave the country.
We put in place different measures during that time, from small-scale measures to larger ones. The first one was to extend the opening hours of the embassy to receive as many Canadians as possible. The fast lane that you were referring to was to expedite the production of travel documents and immigration documents. For instance, a passport application would normally take 15 working days; we were able to produce passports in five working days. That would enable people to take advantage of commercial options that were available for them to leave. We would point them to those commercial options through travel agencies and we would also point them to airline companies and ground transportation companies.
Another measure we put in place was to increase the capacity of our 24/7 call centre so that when we received calls from the Canadian community here in Canada or from people on the ground in Syria, we could direct their questions and get answers as fast as possible. As my colleague said in her opening remarks, we received close to 1,600 calls. We also placed 3,400 calls in an attempt to give people registered with us the latest information.
One of the last measures we put in place was really to communicate as much as possible through all available means—mass email, mass SMS messaging, texting, calling people, and calling the families here as well--to convince their loved ones to leave the country. We believe it's been effective, given that about 300 of them who were in contact with us during that period said they had left.
Those basically, in a nutshell, are the measures we put in place for that period.