Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Sunquist, I want to thank you and your team for coming here today.
I am going to talk about the Congo, the DRC. You said that the humanitarian crisis in eastern DRC is the longest standing and most serious in the world. MONUC has indeed been involved there for a very long time and has cost the United Nations a fortune. You said that only a regional solution will bring about long-term stability to the DRC and the region, and that Canada co-chaired the Group of Friends in the region as well as the setting up of an international conference in the Great Lakes region.
My question is very simple: What has happened since that International Conference on the Great Lakes? The way I see the situation currently unfolding in the DRC is that last February, Ms. Oda, our Minister responsible for CIDA... The four countries in the Great Lakes region, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and the DRC, are no longer Canada's partners.
Is Canada dissociating itself from what is currently happening in the DRC? What does Canada intend to do? Canada should be playing a very important diplomatic role. We are not doing enough for the francophonie. Yet the DRC is part of that. I would like a little more information on that issue.
The international conferences yielded results, and things are going well. The situation has improved somewhat in Rwanda and the DRC. However, we cannot talk about peace. But since Rwanda is the country that exports the largest amount of coltan in the world without having a single coltan mine, we are entitled to ask a number of questions.
What is Canada doing at present? I don't want to know what Canada has donated in recent years nor whether Canada participated in MONUC. However, from a diplomatic perspective, what is Canada currently doing?
Thank you.