Your first question was about election monitoring. The Catholic Church is going to deploy as many observers as possible. In addition, an American organization called Freedom House, associations and young people have expressed their desire to volunteer as election observers to make sure the elections are conducted properly and thus bring the regime destroying the country to an end. All the women who belong to the associations provide training, as do some Congolese experts. As I said earlier, Canada contributed $280,000, or $301,000 Canadian, under the women, peace and security program. That money helped us train all those women, and we will continue to train and help women.
We need help to secure areas in which women are running. We want to clean up those areas. You've seen how the UN mission has fallen short. Despite being on the ground for more than 15 years, the UN hasn't been able to bring the fighting in the country to an end. If you keep pumping money into MONUSCO, Canadian taxpayer dollars will continue to support an initiative that will not lead to a solution. Why can't Canada lobby the UN and its allies to establish a military force to combat armed groups, similar to the Operation Artemis troops deployed by France in Bunia? Even our military says the rebels are Jihadists and that it can't contain them because they are waging asymmetrical warfare. The military is unable to gain the upper hand. How can women stand for office in areas occupied by armed groups, when they risk being kidnapped, raped or even killed? It is high time to help us clean up those areas.
This is not just about the December 23 elections. We have a process, an election agenda that goes right up to 2020. Local elections will be held in March. For that, we need Canada to not just provide financial assistance, but also lobby the UN to deploy military troops to combat all the armed groups and demobilize the areas in order to foster peace.
The focus needs to be on something other than the Ebola virus. The reason people in Beni reacted the way they did to health care workers treating the virus was that it showed the international community was more concerned about eradicating the outbreak—an important objective, to be sure—than it was about addressing the fact that the people in Beni were being slaughtered every single day. Some of them don't even sleep at home anymore. More than a thousand residents move around every night, looking for a safe neighbourhood to sleep in. They come home the next day. Children don't go to school anymore. The orphans produced by the massacres are not taken into account. How can people possibly stand in an election in that context?
The people have spoken: they don't want to see those in power stay in power. Help us ensure the elections are conducted properly. We hope the Catholic Church will be able to deploy enough observers and help us [Technical difficulty—Editor].