Thank you for your presentation today.
My colleagues have covered quite a bit of ground on the response time. It was said that it was done in two minutes, but I have a different picture. In the Caribbean islands, in the case of students studying abroad, they were not in touch with the students for a good 24 hours or 48 hours. Evacuation was a major concern.
Do you recommend that our Canadian missions abroad should come up with a plan? According to the students, Americans were picking up people left, right, and centre, with helicopters and other resources, but Canadians were left until everything was restored, and then they would come. There was no timeline on it.
I had calls in the middle of the night. They said, “What are you doing for us?” People showed up at my doorstep the next day. I said, “What's wrong?” He said, “My daughter is dying, and you're sleeping.” I said, “What do you want me to do?”
With climate change, we can expect more disasters. Do we have a contingency plan for our missions abroad to tackle all of those?