Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Epp and officials, for being here today.
I want to start by very publicly saying that we are in this position...and I want to acknowledge the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar and offer, again, publicly, condolences to his family and to the community in Surrey that was profoundly affected by that tragic killing. It has brought us to a difficult position.
The second thing I want to do is ask you to express to our officials in the mission who remain in Delhi, as well as those working remotely and our locally engaged staff, our appreciation for working under very difficult circumstances, and whether it's on the immigration side, the trade side, the foreign affairs side or the consular side, our appreciation for continuing to do that work in a very difficult situation.
The third thing I would like to say, and it's somewhat rhetorical—and I don't really expect an answer—is, can you imagine the outrage from the opposition if the Prime Minister had not taken the opportunity to speak to members of Parliament about this situation and had done it somewhere else or allowed it to happen somewhere else?
I don't expect an answer, but I think it showed a great respect for us as members of Parliament that it was the venue at which he chose to raise these allegations.
With respect to the position we're in right now, since that killing last year both the United States and the U.K. have raised allegations about inappropriate activities by the Indian government in those two very close allied countries. There are probably no two closer allies to Canada than the U.K. and the U.S.
Do we have conversations with them about this? How is our approach similar or dissimilar on this? The facts are different in what happened. However, are we engaged with our allies on this particular problem?