Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our guests. I should say, as a local MP from Ottawa, that I welcome you here to Ottawa. There is a very tight history between your royal family and our city. So welcome.
There are so many questions, but I'm quite intrigued by the idea of ensuring that we aren't seen as outsiders coming in. I think we have to be a little humble in our own story.
When my mother was born, she wasn't regarded as a person constitutionally here in Canada, because the Persons case, which we all should know here in Canada, declaring women to be persons, was back in 1929. Women didn't get the vote until 1918 here. I know this sounds great if you're in another country and don't have the vote, or if you're not declared a person as a woman in other countries constitutionally, but we have to understand that this is our narrative and not be arrogant about what we're trying to do here.
I'm very sensitive of the fact that, if we go into, particularly....
By the way, I should note that we usually have women at this committee. It's a bit odd, frankly; normally my colleague Hélène Laverdière is sitting next to me. My friend Robert is subbing for her. We have parliamentary secretary Lois Brown here. We're working at it.
I just want to say that these aspects that you're talking about—ensuring that we aren't going to be agents of noted imperialism, you said, or of colonialism, which is a hangover in many of these places.... We need to work at the grassroots level.
One area we're looking at as a committee is conflict zones. You touched on this issue. I note that when I was in Iraq in September with a colleague, Mr. Garneau, and the foreign affairs minister, we were hearing stories and were very concerned about what was happening there. I don't have to tell you about what's happening in Jordan: the stories of women being sold. Clearly this is happening elsewhere, but in conflict zones to which we have access through funding and through people who are working on the ground, it seems to me we're not doing enough. It seems to me more could be done, in building schools to accompany these refugee camps and in making sure that there is work there, for families to have cash. That's a program that has been working well. We provide as robust health services as we can, because after all, we know that these people have fled conflict. We know they are in harm's way. They shouldn't be put in further harm's way.
I'd like to hear from you, because we're studying Iraq at committee as well, and obviously the plight of refugees. Perhaps you could tell us about how you get into refugee camps, what kind of work is being done, and how you are making sure, when women and girls are supposedly in a safe place in a refugee camp, they aren't in further danger, which is sadly the case in some of these refugee camps that we speak of.