Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The government has very serious difficulty with the issue of making a study on public and private investment. If you're talking about private funds, you're talking about public pension funds, which foreign affairs has nothing to do with. It's not relevant.
Doing an economic measure, as was adopted with Burma.... That is not a study dealing with what private funds are doing, all those things. It's just an economic statement. We're not asking for economic sanctions against Sudan at this time here.
But to do a study with relevance to private funds, to pension funds, to all these things, that is not the purview of the foreign affairs committee; that's the purview of the finance committee. We're mixing two things together.
I don't have any problem if you want to do a study on Sudan dealing with other issues, like the comprehensive peace agreement and all these things. However, the difficulty is we are moving into an area that the Department of Foreign Affairs just doesn't deal with: private funds, pension funds, and all these things. It's nothing to do with economic sanctions; therefore, it is not under the purview.
Now, I'm asking you as the chair whether this is relevant. We feel it's not relevant to this committee. Unless there's a change in the wording, we would have difficulty doing that. I'm asking you, why are we studying private funds and these things in this committee? It should be done, appropriately, by the finance committee.
So I'm asking you to make a ruling on this.