I would say that this is a common feature of a lot of our emergency responses. We have a registry of Canadians abroad. It's voluntary. People can let us know when they travel where they are going to be so that we can reach out to them in the case of a natural disaster or a sudden emergency.
We know that not all Canadians choose that service, for different reasons. They tend to choose to register when they go to places where they expect to have trouble—more difficult, more complex, more hostile environments—and not in places where they are very comfortable and feel safe. That particularly applies to people who are visiting family and relatives, etc. They tend not to think that anything is going to happen.
Part of our consular policy outreach is to encourage that, to bring more awareness to that, to understand where people are so that we can have a better initial picture of exactly what the environment is like when an emergency strikes.
In this particular case, having a presence on the ground is really critical, not just to understanding where Canadians might be but to engaging quickly with local authorities to start unblocking some of the things that get put in place particularly in a health crisis like this, in which there is a lot of anxiety and fear and you have a government that has taken quite extreme, unprecedented measures to lock down particular regions and cities.
That has created a lot of the issues we have, even in terms of the permissions we needed to get from the Government of China to move staff into the area. It's not just that people couldn't get out. Our staff was also not allowed in because the border around the province was sealed and closed. We had to move staff there by road. We had to make sure they had the right protections. We had to have all the right authorities, not just national but also provincial and municipal. That's one example.
It is really this very detailed consular work with families that is so important to determining what people's needs are, and then to figuring out, as the Government of Canada, how we can address them, because each family situation is very different.
In the case of the children, which we have discussed at length here today, there are particularly good examples of that with very different family configurations, including people with grandparents who aren't able to travel, and we're working case by case to figure out the best way for us to assist them.
It isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. Even though it looks like sending a plane is the one-size-fits-all solution, when you unpack everything below that, there is a lot of information that has to go into it to allow us to do the work with local authorities in an environment where we don't control all the elements, to make sure that they are facilitated in getting to the airport. The plane is actually not the most complicated part. The most complicated part is getting Canadians from across this province to the place where we can reach them directly and help them to exit.
All of these are things we've been working on. Each response provides a lot of lessons learned. They are all different, and we'll be unpacking this as well. In this particular environment with a pandemic response of this nature, it's the first time we've had to assist such a large number of Canadians within a quarantine zone. Responses to SARS and Ebola were emergency responses as well, but they were of a very different nature.
We're working with our allies. In particular, I have daily calls with my counterparts from all of our like-minded countries, who are all mounting these operations. We are sharing lessons learned. We are working to facilitate the departure of each other's nationals on our planes, and to make sure that we are advocating jointly where possible to unblock some of the challenges that municipal or local governments have put in place. Those are in place for maybe very good reasons on the China side, but they pose challenges for us as we help our nationals to depart.
That international dimension of the work is very important, and we've had very good, close collaboration with our allies on that.
