Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I again want to state what my colleague just said, that when I came here, it was to hear about Canada's efforts in evacuation and humanitarian efforts, as well as the crisis in Lebanon, in the Middle East. That was the intent of the motion; that was the whole idea for which we came here.
Accordingly, we called in the witnesses, people who are engaged in humanitarian efforts, to understand what challenges they were facing, what they were going to do, and what would be the future intention of CIDA in Lebanon, where the majority of the devastation has taken effect. They had this opportunity.
Then we were going to listen to what I call a very strong party, and that is the Lebanese diaspora who are over here in Canada. If time permitted and if the opposition wasn't happy, we could have carried on. However, as my colleague said, we have stopped all these things here to pass a motion that actually deals with those things.
You know, if he had listened to all these witnesses who would have come, we would have put in a working solution, a working motion, taking what they said into account in this. But now that is not what is happening. What is happening is that the whole thing has turned into a football.
I know Madame Lalonde very well. I've worked with her in the past. She alluded to a report that dealt with the relationship of Canada with the Muslim world, and she and I were participants in that. We went around the world, we studied the report, and we made those recommendations alluding to this, to see how Canada can best strengthen relationships with the Muslim world. So we have all these things that we did. Nevertheless, we need to know what has taken place now in the crisis, on humanitarian issues out there.
At the time we did that report that you allude to, Madame Lalonde, one of the strongest recommendations from the report was that we engage with the Muslim community in here. Now, following the civil war in Lebanon and the devastation, we have a huge Lebanese community living in Canada--in Montreal, in Ottawa, and in my riding as well.
I can tell you that one of the largest ethnic groups that live in my riding is the Lebanese community. Therefore, when this crisis took place, they immediately contacted me and I contacted them for a dialogue. It is important that a dialogue take place with them, because they are the players. Their loved ones are there. So that is what I alluded to, the fact that Peter MacKay, the honourable minister, on my invitation, came to Calgary to listen to them, not to attend the Calgary Stampede.
You see, Mr. Chair, this is the problem with people who come from Toronto, MPs who sit over there and pass judgment as if to say Calgary does not exist and Calgary's people are not important.