The federal government has stopped running evacuation flights out of quake-stricken Haiti and will likely soon announce that the Canadian death toll has more than doubled.
At least 34 Canadians are confirmed dead and another 50 are missing after the magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck Jan. 12.
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said the time will soon come when officials will have to acknowledge that many of the missing are, in fact, dead.
"It's getting to a tipping point where we will have to be able to make that determination," he said, adding that won't happen until "all the recourses have run the gamut."
RCMP specialists are striving to identify bodies as more are found in the rubble, and consular officials continue to try to track down some of the missing as reports of possible sightings come in.
"We keep checking on the information that has been made available by members of these families to find out the last time, for example, that the individual was seen or was in touch," Mr. Cannon said.
"All such efforts are continuing. So [until]we have done the absolute maximum possible we will not change our way of going about it."
At least 4,618 people have been evacuated by Canada aboard 48 flights out of Haiti.
Canadians in Haiti are being asked to book their own commercial flights home now that the airport in Port-au-Prince has been reopened to commercial aviation, Mr. Cannon said.
Canadian troops, whose numbers peaked at about 2,000, have begun a staged withdrawal from Haiti. HMCS Halifax left on Friday.
Emergency relief efforts are slowly scaling down and planning for long-term reconstruction has begun.
About 200,000 people are believed to have died in the disaster.