Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I welcome the minister to the committee. While the minister alluded to our promotion and strengthening of democratic institutions, which I'm sure the committee will study, we just talked about Afghanistan, but I want you to talk about another success story that Canada has been doing.
Under your authority, I went to east and central Africa to look at the peace initiative, of which Canada is a co-chair, that is taking place in the Congo area, in the Great Lakes region, to bring promotion of peace to Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, and the surrounding areas. What was amazing was to see how the Canadian co-chair was helping democracy come to Congo, after 40 years of rule.
I want to say to my colleague, just imagine a ballot box with 843 names. There were 843 names on each ballot box out there, and these were illiterate Africans who went out there and participated in these elections. Canada has been playing a very strong role in that, and this is, one can say, a forgotten area of Africa where people are not seeing Canada's contribution. This is a great success story, which you'll probably want to allude to.