Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As you know, I'm the parliamentary secretary, so I'm well aware of the actions the government has taken. I've met Mr. Malok on many occasions.
I just wanted to give you a small update on the further actions you talked about in reference to the UN high-level meeting that took place that was attended by Minister Cannon himself to address that issue. Many of the concerns you're addressing involve those concerns, so I will carry on and let my other colleagues ask the questions.
I had just gone to Nigeria for the independence day celebrations, and I met the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Mr. Carson. I had a breakfast meeting with him.
That, by the way, resulted in my missing, by 15 minutes, a car bomb that had been placed in the car. Otherwise, there would have been a byelection in Calgary East, too. It missed me by 15 minutes just because I had breakfast with Mr. Carson, which was a good thing, anyways....
That was true, because then I missed the bus with the president, and I had to go myself over the road where there were two car bombs.
The issue was a very strong concern with the Government of Sudan on fulfilling many of the requirements that you've all pointed out about the referendum coming on time. As you know, Mr. Bashir cannot attend due to ICC warrants, so Mr. Taha, the vice-president, is the person who tends to do all that.
The concern that has come out of this, as you rightly pointed out, is to tell the Government of Sudan that they must hold their referendum and to continue. To that effect, all the ministers who were attending have written a very strong letter, which I delivered to the minister, to Mr. Taha, expressing the international community's very serious concerns in reference to any delay in the referendum and to move ahead. This was in no uncertain terms made very clear to the Government of Sudan, that they have a responsibility to meet their portion of CPA.
We will continue monitoring that. The Government of Canada will continue to remain engaged. We have called in people from both north and south Sudan to train as referendum experts. As you all know, the referendum has to be very transparent, otherwise the north will use it as an excuse to say it won't meet the referendum agreement.
I just wanted to let you know that all these concerns will continue to be addressed. It's a main concern of the government and the whole international community.
With that, I'll stop and let my colleagues go ahead, because I think they have some challenging questions.