It's going to be really tough, because I think we have an awful lot of unanswered questions that we'd like to pursue.
The first question is a straight factual one, and maybe anyone around the table could answer.
There was to be an international donors conference, where there was hopefully going to be a serious commitment and engagement by the international community to do what I think was identified by President Préval when he came to Canada recently.
For those of us who went to Haiti on a parliamentary mission, the same thing was identified as the critical pressing priority, which was major economic activity and movement for people to have a sense there was a possibility of actually getting up off their knees economically and making some genuine progress to improve people's lives. Can you tell us whether that has happened and with what results at this point?
Secondly, Madam Bouchard, you spoke about how perceptions matter. I have to say that one of the things I found extremely difficult to deal with when I was in Haiti was on two perceptions. One was what I would call the “elephant in a room syndrome”, where everybody knew there were huge problems that were unanswered, unattended to, and unresolved around political prisoners and other kinds of prisoners who are detained, incarcerated, face no charges, and people don't even know what they're doing there, and so on. Again, there was a sense that somehow this problem was going to resolve itself.
But you have the political leadership from Lavalas still imprisoned, in some cases, and Mr. Neptune himself, the former prime minister, instead of seeing some progress in dealing with this, which I would broadly characterize as a kind of truth-and-reconciliation process. Talk about a perception problem.
Canada is closing the door to the new prime minister coming into Canada. Why is that? Is it because of close ties to Lavalas? We haven't heard any allegations on why we've taken this position. So we become implicated in that.
What can Canada do and what does Canada need to do? What must Canada do to deal with these perception problems, if not international legal problems? They must be addressed if our hands are going to be clean and if we are going to be seen as an honest broker and a genuine partner with a new Haiti under new leadership, elected with an amazing and a very strong mandate.