Thank you.
When I had the opportunity to be in Iraq in early September with Minister Baird and my colleague Paul Dewar we had an opportunity to talk to the deputy minister of foreign affairs and we had a rather interesting discussion. I'm saying this by way of observation. He was interested in the concept of federalism. He said they were very familiar with the fact that Canada has a federal system. I found it interesting that this was being explored given, as you pointed out earlier on, the fact that there are Kurds, Shias, Sunnis, and many other minorities. I found that encouraging.
While I was there we went up to Erbil, and Paul and I and Minister Baird met with Chaldean Christians. I have to say that the Chaldean bishop was extremely eloquent and very forceful in telling us about the need for help because they had fled the Mosul area and they were in dire circumstances. I'm not sure if we went to the mall that you referred to but it was a building right across the street from the church where we met, and we met some people who were evidently in great distress. They were not even in the schools, which were temporary at that time.
Then we went to the Baharka United Nations camp and got some sense of the scope of the challenge because many more camps are needed and are not even funded currently. Yes, we talked about long term at the beginning, but in the short term, what is your assessment, Mr. Hétu, about the need for humanitarian aid with respect to this displaced population in the Kurdish area of Iraq.