Citizenship and Immigration committee  This is a great question. We have that capacity at Global Affairs. During the Afghanistan crisis, we had over 200 individuals in our operations centre working the phone lines and answering emails. The number of emails we started to receive in the middle of that crisis was extreme.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Our department has the capacity to handle very large-scale international emergencies—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I cannot speak to the capacity of other departments. You've seen our department lead the COVID repatriation initiative—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, again I think this is a very good question. It's about ensuring that we are resourced and that crises that have domestic components have good support from the whole system. In this case, I would say that there was a significant interdepartmental effort. The scale of the demand for immigration was exceptional.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Every emergency scenario is unique. Every one is different. To manage these, we do a lot of planning. We do a lot of contingency planning ahead of time. We watch the world. I have a 24-7 emergency watch centre, where we have teams following events as they're happening around the world so that we can be aware of what's going on.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thanks for the question, Madam Chair. Yes, we were very pleased to receive resources. A key part of these resources will be developed toward building our surge response capacity. Importantly, we will have a standing emergency response team that will focus on being primed to move quickly.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, exactly. Our mandate is for consular, so in this case it was exclusively focused on Canadian citizens, PRs and their family members.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, the letters of facilitation were exclusively sent to Canadian citizens, permanent residents and their family members. They were not—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Those individuals would have been selected by the immigration department, so—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Canadian citizens, of course, were.... All of these individuals were vetted, and—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Correct, and if I could just add something important about how we use these letters of facilitation—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Okay.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Correct, and letters of facilitation don't provide new authorities. They—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's established information being put in a letter that so-and-so is Canadian.