Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to all our witnesses for their absolutely superb presentations. I wish we did have more time. Maybe one day we'll actually amend the rules around committees so that we can get into issues in a little more depth, but alas, I only have seven minutes.
I just want to read something into the record, Chair. It's a report about Yezidis being able to “choose between conversion, expulsion, or execution”, and about militants targeting Yezidis, “shooting dead 23 on a bus and bombing several villages resulting in hundreds of deaths”. You would think that was just from this past year, or this past six months. But what I'm reading into the record is a reference to former Ambassador Lamani's work from 2007.
The reason I read this into the record is that, as Professor Akhavan just told us, the roots of this and the warnings for this were a number of years ago. I think it's telling that Professor Akhavan tells us that there seems to be a pattern here, where we ignore the facts until they look us in the face, and we seem to be on that road again.
Former Ambassador Lamani, one of the things you cited in your presentation was the need for a diplomatic engagement. I just wanted to get this from you, based on your experience. You've been to Istanbul recently. You've talked to some groups who presently are outside of the “coalition”, I'll call it, or at least the engagement. Who would they be? What other countries could be engaged, along with Canada, to do this diplomatic engagement? And what should be the criteria for engagement?
In other words, before we go in and start talking, there should be some framework. I'm particularly thinking of the UN resolution that was passed with regard to ISIS, or the non-Islamic State. Perhaps you could help us with that.