Good morning.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), this is our study of Canada's response to the violence, religious persecution, and dislocation caused by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL. We will get started.
I want to explain the way that we're going to work with our witnesses today.
Right now, joining us here in Ottawa, is Tarek Fatah, who is a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress. Welcome, sir. We're glad to have you here today.
Sitting next to him is Salim Mansur, associate professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario. Salim, welcome to you, sir.
And joining us by video conference is Sami Aoun, who is a full professor at the University of Sherbrooke.
Mr. Aoun can only be with us for the first hour. We will go quickly to get another witness who will join us by video conference from Virginia.
We'll go with our three opening statements, and then we'll start our rounds of questioning. As I said, after one hour we will change our video conference and then continue with the questions. I mention that so that if there are any questions for Mr. Aoun, we will make sure we do that in the first hour.
Mr. Fatah, we're going to start with your opening statement. Then we'll move over to Mr. Mansur and finish with Mr. Aoun.
Welcome, sir. I'll turn the floor over to you.