Thank you very much.
As you know, I'm the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Coming out of the instability that has been in Congo for a long time, Kofi Annan, when he was Secretary-General of the UN, initiated the Great Lakes region initiative and asked Canada and everybody else to help bring stability back to Congo.
In that capacity, I went to Congo. I visited during election time. It was quite an exercise, I must say, to have an election with 800 candidates. It was a great election. I was there on the ground at the time. I went from Kigali down to Goma. Then I went to the Great Lakes region initiative conference that took place in Nairobi, with all the countries coming down. Canada was there.
There is no question that Canada took an active role. I met with the NGOs of the Great Lakes region initiative to see how we could assist to get Congo back on its feet.
There are a lot of challenges in that region, no question. Those who perpetrated the massacres in Rwanda moved into the eastern Congo--into Goma and that area. The LRA up north is using Congo as a base. Nobody underestimates the fact that there are serious problems of rape and all these things. I visited hospitals that are working hard to help these ladies who have been raped. There are a lot of people and NGOs working very hard.
The fact still remains, and it is a clearly important fact, that there has been progress over there. You have identified areas of concern, and we will not say that they are not areas of concern. But the fact of the matter remains that after the Great Lakes region initiative, there was an agreement signed by all these countries to not interfere with each other.
The headquarters of the Great Lakes is now in Bujumbura, and is run by the former Tanzanian foreign minister.
The fact is that it is a work in progress in Congo. It may not have been doing very well preceding that. The MONUC is there doing all these things. What we should be doing is helping civil society to build capacity and help this government, instead of saying, as you have been saying, that the current government is illegal. Now, finally, after all this fighting, there are institutions coming up in Congo.
I think I will conclude by saying that while your group is here bringing all these things out—I do not say that they are not there; they are there—I would say that your group should actually be looking at ways to assist civil society in building the capacity to bring Congo back. It is wrong to say that only the Government of Canada can do it and that the Government of Canada should do it. You are a Congolese of Canadian origin. You have an excellent opportunity here to move forward. There are a lot of good things happening in Congo. Let's focus on that.
That's all I need to say. Thank you.