Evidence of meeting #57 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was going.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Laura Dawson  Director, Canada Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center, As an Individual
Christopher Sands  Senior Research Professor and Director, Center for Canadian Studies, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, As an Individual
Bessma Momani  Professor, University of Waterloo, As an Individual
Paul Heinbecker  Distinguished Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation

9:40 a.m.

Liberal

Michael Levitt Liberal York Centre, ON

I'll gladly take my little bit of time and thank you both for your very interesting testimony this morning.

Ms. Dawson, you mentioned at the start of your testimony the number of committees and individuals from both Parliament and business heading to Washington. I was lucky enough to take a group down. I chair the subcommittee of international human rights, and we went down with a multi-partisan group about three or four weeks ago now and had the opportunity to meet with members of Congress, members of the Senate, and members of the Tom Lantos commission, to look at the synergy that exists on issues of international human rights and where there's an alignment on issues our committees can work together on.

It was really interesting, and there was clearly a lot of common ground. We met with more or less an equal number of Republicans and Democrats on these. There was lots of alignment, issues like the Rohingya in Myanmar, Venezuela, Burundi, the Yazidis, and South Sudan, a number of areas our subcommittee has studied and continues to study.

I think there were also question marks from both Republicans and Democrats on the administration's direction moving forward. Again, there was very much alignment among the individuals we met with from parties, but in terms of where the administration might go on these issues, it didn't really seem to have been on the radar so much yet, and there was a bit of uncertainty in terms of future direction.

Of the 553 key appointments that require Senate approval, I think there have been just over 20 that have already received confirmation. Given that's in the mix, and given we're doing this kind of outreach, speak to us a little about that uncertainty and the disconnect between the parliamentarians down there and the administration and how we should approach this. Are we doing the right thing getting in early and engaging with sort of the grassroots in Congress and the Senate? How should we be playing this?

9:45 a.m.

Director, Canada Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center, As an Individual

Laura Dawson

Fairly well.

There is uncertainty. There is a lack of coordination. There is no grand agenda or plan that we can look to and say, “Oh, you shouldn't be doing this.”

Going from those nice Canadians, those pleasant Canadians, I think we need to be those ubiquitous Canadians, because as the Chinese say, we're “crossing the river by feeling the stones”. Nobody is quite sure where this is going.

If Canada is engaged in human rights committees.... I've heard great compliments about what Canada has been doing in the OAS with Venezuela, Canada-Mexico—

9:45 a.m.

Liberal

Michael Levitt Liberal York Centre, ON

Yes.

9:45 a.m.

Director, Canada Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center, As an Individual

Laura Dawson

Kudos to that.

There are the women entrepreneurship groups with Justin Trudeau and Ivanka Trump. That was great as well.

The Come From Away play in New York was excellent, because you are there with your ear to the ground trying to figure out what's next.

The one piece of tradecraft I would give you is, don't just be the nice Canadians who are finding the alignments. Make sure you're asking for something, and make sure you're telling them how important you already are to them.

I attend a lot of meetings with U.S. officials, and the Canadians come in and out, and they go, “They were so nice. What did they want?”

9:45 a.m.

Liberal

Michael Levitt Liberal York Centre, ON

Thank you.

Mr. Sands.

9:45 a.m.

Senior Research Professor and Director, Center for Canadian Studies, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, As an Individual

Dr. Christopher Sands

I think that Canada's record on human rights is outstanding. It's been consistent across different governments—Conservative, Liberal. It's really one of Canada's strong points.

The Trump administration's commitment on human rights seems strong. You saw the President's personal reaction to the gassing of Syrian children. This was something very visceral for him.

The challenge in the U.S., though, is that if the U.S. is making big cuts to foreign aid—we're already talking about a 37% cut to the State Department—I worry that those cuts, even if they're not realized fully, will be very damaging to the U.S. ability to engage on these issues. That's not just at the rhetorical level. The President can continue to speak out, but it really needs to be followed up by monitoring and action.

9:45 a.m.

Liberal

Michael Levitt Liberal York Centre, ON

Yes.

9:45 a.m.

Senior Research Professor and Director, Center for Canadian Studies, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, As an Individual

Dr. Christopher Sands

It's hard for me to ask Canada to help pick up the slack, but maybe as you see us slipping, that's one thing we could rely on Canadians for.

Although, ultimately we should fund this stuff ourselves, we should be there ourselves, if you see an area that is maybe not getting the attention that the United States used to give to it because of these cuts, because of the distraction of personnel changes, to the extent that we are aligned, Canada's voice will be more important than ever.

9:45 a.m.

Liberal

Michael Levitt Liberal York Centre, ON

Thank you very much.

9:45 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bob Nault

Thank you, Mr. Levitt.

To Dr. Dawson and Professor Sands, thank you very much, and especially to Mr. Sands for hanging in there. We very much enjoyed your presentation and your answers to questions this morning, once we got you into it.

This is a very important discussion for Canada. Obviously, Canada-U.S. relations is a very complex area. But again, we have a long history.

I have to admit, I couldn't agree with you more: Canadians tend to be very nice, to the point where sometimes we leave a meeting wondering what exactly we were there for; we were so nice while we were there. It doesn't hurt to be a little more strident. I agree with you that Canada has to send the proper messaging as we go.

You'll see a lot of us down in Washington. Our committee is going to be down there as well, but we're waiting a little longer, until the gap that you were speaking of—all these people who have not been appointed and are causing some of the problems for the Trump administration—starts to deal with itself. I think the fall would be a good time for us to be there.

Again, on behalf of the committee, thank you very much.

Colleagues, we're going to take a two-minute break, and then we'll go to our next witnesses.

9:50 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bob Nault

I would like to bring this meeting back to order. As per our study of Canada-U.S. relations and its foreign affairs obligations, in our second half we're going to hear from Professor Momani from the University of Waterloo; and from the Centre for International Governance Innovation, Paul Heinbecker, who's a distinguished fellow. We've seen Mr. Heinbecker and Professor Momani a few times before—not me, but other members of this committee.

This morning we'll start with Professor Momani, and then we'll go to Mr. Heinbecker. Each will do a short presentation, and then we'll get into some questions.

9:50 a.m.

Dr. Bessma Momani Professor, University of Waterloo, As an Individual

Thanks for the opportunity.

I received a list of nine questions, which could take hours to answer, but I'll try to do it in eight minutes. Hopefully we'll get somewhere on this.

The essence of a few things that I see here is that—as many of you who watch the news as much as I do know—there is a lot of unpredictability going on. We don't know what's happening out of the White House, so it's really difficult to determine exactly what U.S. foreign policy is from one week to the next. It's just so in flux that way.

The challenges I see here are that, as we all know, there is a bit of a personalization of foreign policy. I think the U.S. President has often acted on a knee-jerk reaction, and is very much swayed by unpredictable factors. We're in new territory.

I've been working in Washington quite a bit recently, both with the IMF and Brookings, with which I'm affiliated. Much of my conversation with bureaucrats inside the U.S. administration, whether it's treasury, state, or parts of defence, suggests that there isn't a lot of bureaucratic buy-in. There's a lot of frustration within Washington proper.

Added to that is the fact that they're really short-staffed. There is a great deal of unease in D.C. generally about the lack of capability and the lack of expertise. It doesn't help that the White House itself seems to be lacking on that front. There is a great deal of uncertainty as to whether or not people like Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have a lot of weigh-in and sway with U.S. foreign policy, which again is highly unpredictable. Frankly, there is no expertise in either of their repertoires, so it becomes far more difficult.

That sort of personalization of foreign policy means that there need to be contingencies. There needs to be a number of best-case and worst-case scenarios on all foreign policy issues related to the U.S., because things are very much in flux. One can't help but see that this week alone, five major foreign policy positions were completely reversed by Trump himself, from China's currency manipulation, to questions about Russia, to questions about NATO: suddenly it's no longer obsolete. There is so much flip-flopping here that it makes many of us dizzy trying to analyze this.

In terms of issues that need to be watched for, I think the deregulation of the financial industry is something that Canada needs to be careful about. There are a lot of potential spillovers for Canada, maybe positive and negative, depending on how things go. There is going to be a lot of money pouring in as some of the Dodd-Frank regulations become deregulated and we start to see smaller banks in the U.S. become empowered. This is something the Trump administration is very keen on. One thing he does have is a high number of Goldman Sachs advisers, who are also very much in favour of dismantling this once-hated regulation in the financial industry. I think that's something to be watched.

On the trade front, I noticed the committee had quite a few questions on trade. This is something to be watched, of course. The expected or potential trade war that many had been talking about between China and the U.S. may now be averted. It seems as though the Trump administration is backing down on its idea that China is a manipulator of currency. The truth of the matter on that question is that China is a manipulator of currency, but that's not the point. China's currency has actually risen in recent years as a way to thwart money leaving China, but that was for its own domestic political reasons, not for a trade advantage. In terms of the time to ask China to overvalue its currency, he's probably about three or four years too late.

Federal interest rates are something to be watched. There are planned interest rate increases. Janet Yellen has already noted that. We're at least expecting another two increases between now and the end of the year. Keep in mind that Trump wants them to be lowered; he does not want to see rates increased, so there may be a clash forthcoming. Again, this is a president who doesn't realize there is such a thing as central bank independence, so that's something to be watched. Of course, for Canada, any sort of interest rate movement on the U.S. side is something of interest to us.

Your fourth question asked what this would mean for border issues. I think we have to keep in mind that many of those who surround Trump continue to propagate the myth that a 9/11 bomber came through the Canadian border. That's something that unfortunately still resonates in the fake news and Breitbart type of folks who really surround Trump, so it needs to be heightened, I think, in terms of our awareness on that issue. I don't think we're necessarily expecting to see real changes in terms of border security, but I think the messaging and the leeway that many U.S. border guards have been given, thanks to some of these executive orders, does in fact mean that if this myth propagates itself and is indeed internalized by these agents, it may mean more difficulty for Canadians crossing. I think that's a real issue.

Of course, these executive orders need to be continued to be watched, because they disproportionately affect Canadians from different backgrounds. I can speak from personal experience that if you have several Middle East stamps on your passport, you may be interrogated far differently than if you don't. There is an issue that Canadians need to be concerned about. The government needs to think about how it will deal with discrimination, potentially, at the border on these issues.

There's another thing that I think is important to point out on the Russia front, and it's really quite an exciting one. To go back to an earlier point, there has been a lot of change in the past week alone on a number of issues. While we expected a sort of increased détente between Trump and Putin, it seems as though that may be more rocky. As to how this will affect the NATO alliance, I think it's comforting to hear people like Trump and Tillerson now re-engage in NATO and the alliance. Of course, if it rears its ugly head again in terms of calling NATO obsolete or again putting down the alliance, that's problematic.

In terms of allies in eastern Europe, there is still obviously a rush, a clamouring, to try to get into NATO as fast as possible. Russian troops are approaching Belarus, for example. One can't ignore, of course, the continued occupation of Crimea, eastern Ukraine, and Georgia. I think, from my attendance at a number of security conferences in eastern Europe, eastern European leaders are very, very afraid. They are constantly bombarded by a great deal of fake news in their own language. They don't have the same state news or, I should say, even private news supports or a plethora of views that often can counter some of this fake news. You do have a preponderance of Russian or Russian-backed media in many parts of eastern Europe that are really putting a lot of fear in allies. It's quite powerful messaging, so I think we can't discount that.

Of course, as we head into very important elections in Germany and France, Russia's penetration there is well documented. Whether it's support for Le Pen and other ultra-nationalists in Germany or just the preponderance of fake news, it's something to be watched. As far as the Trump administration is concerned, last week I would have said it was completely trying to sideline this argument, and now, just this week, we've heard Tillerson talk about Russian fake news in eastern Europe. It's really hard to break that down.

I'll spend the few minutes I have remaining to talk about U.S. policy toward the Middle East and the JCPOA. As far as U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East is concerned, of course everything we've seen this past week has shaken a lot of our long-standing assumptions. However, I do think that the engagement or the strike against Syria by the U.S. administration is a limited, one-time thing. I don't expect to see more escalation of that. I don't think the Americans are interested in putting more boots on the ground. They already have about 5,000, maybe a bit more, between Iraq and Syria in the fight against ISIS. I don't see much appetite there.

One has to read the very sensible analysis of people like Mattis and others in the U.S. Pentagon who I think are also very cautious about getting involved or further entangled in the Middle East. The strike itself, 59 Tomahawk missiles on the Syrian air base, probably didn't do a lot of damage in terms of really thwarting Syria's capability, but it did produce a positive signal, at least to the Assad regime, that one type of arsenal is not acceptable—i.e., chemical weapons.

That, of course, does not stop the Syrian regime from continuing the very cruel assault with conventional weapons on its people. That will continue.

If I may, I will just very quickly talk about the Syrian situation and where I think that's going. I think we're seeing that the Syrian government and the Russian government have a plan to basically continue to depopulate and strike at places like Ghouta, Daraya and other parts of Madaya, basically trying to reclaim the very few pockets left in the southern part of the country and around the capital. They are trying to get continued swaths of population such that the rebels in those areas put down their arms and basically agree to be resettled in Deir ez-Zor in the north.

As long as the Syrian regime can regain the Aleppo-Damascus highway to the coast, I think they're quite happy. That's what many internal Syrian regime operatives keep calling the useful part of Syria. I think there is an effort to do that. I think there's a three- to four-year time horizon in that effort.

As far as the fight against ISIS goes, just more generally, it's gone very well in parts of Iraq obviously. Although I think what may not have reached the radar of many is that parts of Iraq like Ramadi have seen a re-entrance of ISIS because of no governance or no central government capacity to actually go in and stabilize the situation. There is a risk, just as in Palmyra, that governments, both Syrian and Iraqi, are not well equipped to actually hold the cities that they liberate. That's a real concern.

As far as Mosul is going, of course eastern Mosul has been liberated. Western Mosul is slow, which is a good thing because it's very, very dense. There will be a rush to try to finish this before the heat comes on, because Mosul's heat or Iraq's heat generally is quite intolerable. This is a street-by-street battle. Of course, the Americans have changed their rules of engagement. I think anybody who denies that is foolish. There's been a change in the rules of engagement, which means that sort of command to the Americans to step up aerial assault on western Mosul has gone up. That has led to the increase in civilian deaths. I would caution against that.

Do we still have time to speak about the JCPOA or do I need to wrap it up?

10:05 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bob Nault

I think we'll wrap up, otherwise we won't get to any questions.

10:05 a.m.

Professor, University of Waterloo, As an Individual

Dr. Bessma Momani

My apologies.

10:05 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bob Nault

No problem. Thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. Heinbecker, please.

April 13th, 2017 / 10:05 a.m.

Paul Heinbecker Distinguished Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation

Merci, mesdames et messieurs.

I looked at that list also, and I came to the conclusion that I would try to answer one or two of the questions. I very much agree with what Bessma has been saying. She and I have worked together on many things for a long time. Maybe we've come to see the world too much the same, but anyway, we do.

I'll speak a little bit about Trump's foreign policy. As Bessma was saying, the “u” words—unpredictable, uncertain—seem to be operative. The best description of Trump's foreign policy I've seen was a cartoon in the Washington Post yesterday. It shows Trump with a civil war kind of cannon, and he's blowing a big hole in the Oval Office wall. He says to his assistant, Reince Priebus, “Okay now draw a target around that.” Then the second line is, “And ask Spicey to distribute it to the newspapers.”

This is a government that doesn't have a foreign policy. It has erratic impulses, and that's making people nervous literally around the world.

I want to talk I guess more specifically about the U.S. proposed budget, the cuts, and what that might entail. There is to be a cut of about $10 billion from the State Department—about 28% of its budget—that will fall particularly heavily on the United Nations and other organizations. There is always a lot of loose talk about what the size of the U.S. budget is and how much is being spent. The budget of the UN is about $13 billion to $14 billion, give or take, and the U.S. share of that is about a quarter. If you take out a quarter of the spending of the U.S., you're looking at about a $4-billion hole that others will have to find some way either of filling or of cutting programs that are not going to be necessary. The Canadian share of the UN budget is about 3%.

There's always a lot of misunderstanding in people's minds about the size of the aid program. There was a poll recently I saw that suggested that Americans thought about a third of their budget was going to foreign aid, when it's about 1%. Indeed, the Canadian share is heading in that direction also. There's going to need to be some catching up.

I looked through this in the late 1990s when the Americans also decided to stop paying their full dues. They ran up a rather significant bill, but at the end of the day, they decided they would pay the bill, and the UN was financially mostly restored.

There was talk at the time of reducing the U.S. share of the UN budget to about 15%. That wasn't talk that was originating in Washington. That was talk that was originating around the table in the UN because people wanted to reduce the influence of the Americans in the UN. It's one of the great ironies that no one benefits more from the UN than the United States does, and no one seems to disregard it more.

I'll say a word or two about why the UN matters and why we should not be giving up on it. First of all, the UN Charter provides the international rules of the road, and most countries accept most of it most of the time. It's in their interest. It's the only rule book there is for the international strategic political situation.

Secondly, there is a kind of non-stop diplomacy that takes place here 24-7. This is something that's not well understood. There hasn't been a war between the major powers since Korea, and even that could be considered an exception because China was not in the UN or not on the Security Council.

There hasn't been a war between powers on the Security Council since 1945. Part of the reason is that they are there day in and day out at the UN Security Council. The five permanent members run the place—no one should have any doubt about that—and they're meeting constantly, day in, day out, often weekends. I'm the last Canadian to have sat on the UN Security Council, and the stories you hear about nobody being home on the weekend and nobody being there after 5:00 are urban legend. I can remember meeting all night plenty of times and getting phone calls in the middle of the night to come for a meeting plenty of times.

There is a non-stop diplomacy, and that means that the Russians and the Americans and the Chinese know each others' red lines, know what the limits are, and are not going to go to war by miscalculation or misunderstanding.

A third value of the UN Security Council is that it has basically stigmatized aggression. Why was it that the Russians were pretending they were little green men in Crimea? They didn't want to admit that they were actually breaking international law. It's one of the great, delicious ironies in the Syrian situation that the Russians have run to the Security Council to complain that the Americans are breaking international law, and isn't that a terrible thing to be doing?

Well, it is in some ways a very regrettable thing to be doing, but it's also a very understandable one. If the law prevents you from saving people who are being gassed and bombarded by their own government, then the law is an ass and something has to be done about it, and that's what we've been seeing. That was the hope, at least, with Trump.

Always with Trump, however, there's more to it than that—or less to it than that—and in this particular case it is possible that if the Americans don't follow up, they will actually have made the situation worse in Syria rather than better, because people now have expectations. For ordinary Syrians who thought perhaps relief was coming, it probably isn't.

There are things that could be done. Bessma and I have talked about them at various times. At every stage of this crisis it has been easier to do something about it the day before than it is the day afterwards. That goes also for no-fly zones and for safe havens. The Turkish government, for example, has been advocating from the very beginning for a place inside Syria—and it has more than one motivation for this—where Syrians could go and be safe and not have to test their luck in the Mediterranean.

That's my time, Mr. Chairman.

10:15 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bob Nault

Thank you, Mr. Heinbecker.

He comes from the same generation I do—right on time.

Okay, we'll start with Mr. Anderson, please.

10:15 a.m.

Conservative

David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's a pleasure to be here at committee today. There are a number of directions I'd like to go in during my short amount of time, but Professor, I'd like to ask you what you see as the role of state legislatures in protecting our trade relationship. We have, I think, more than three dozen states whose main trading partner is Canada.

Could you comment on that?

10:15 a.m.

Professor, University of Waterloo, As an Individual

Dr. Bessma Momani

Yes. It's a good point, and there's a lot of power and discretion at the state level. If I may, I'll just quickly link this to the JCPOA. Even with the multilateral breakdown of the...removing some of the sanctions against Iran, for example, with the JCPOA, the states still have a lot of discretion. It became a legal nightmare for investors from the U.S. to actually do anything in Iran because of that. There's a lot of power at the state legislature level.

There's an important point for economic diplomacy here, because many of those state legislatures can in some ways be our greatest partners, but they can also, I think, succumb to their own populist discourses in such a way that we're seen not as a partner but as actually taking away important jobs and other services. I think it really depends on state-by-state public diplomacy.

10:15 a.m.

Conservative

David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

I think we've seen the best and the worst of that. Some governors have come out saying they don't need these border adjustment taxes, but COOL came out of some of the border states, and beef moves back and forth all the time. They should have had more sense, but there were some special interests that really played that issue well.

The U.S. has basically decided that they want to become energy-dominant. They've made a big change, I think, in their commitment to climate change and some of those things. What do you think their relationship with Saudi Arabia and some of the other oil-producing countries will be over the next while? Will there be at any point an addressing of the funding of extremism that has taken place out of a couple of the countries, and particularly Saudi Arabia, over the years? Will that play into the energy conversation, do you think?

10:15 a.m.

Professor, University of Waterloo, As an Individual

Dr. Bessma Momani

On the energy conversation, the U.S. industry right now, just like the Canadian one, is trying to get the value of the dollar per barrel as high as possible, frankly, because much of the fracking industry, where most of the U.S. economic gains are at the moment, requires oil to be at $60 to $70 a barrel and as long as it's in the $50 range it's just not profitable. This is a key issue that we see also in the oil sands.

What that means for U.S.-Saudi relations, frankly, is this is a time when oil is a little out of the mix. The U.S.-Saudi relationship, at least from this White House, is far more focused on Iran. That is where much of these two allies are concentrated, and here there's a meeting of minds. The U.S. and Saudis have a very strong convergence of views on Iran: that it is a nemesis of the region; that it needs to be counteracted; that it's expansionary, both in Yemen and in Syria; so I think it's interesting there is an oil dimension; I agree with that. In this case, the Saudis similarly want to see oil prices go up now. They flooded the market earlier with oil to keep the prices down, to put pressure on the Iranians, but that is over now and so there is an impulse for the Saudis to want to see the price go up.

On the same point, if I may, the reason oil prices are so low is not because of Saudi or OPEC policies. The reality is the global economy is just not growing enough and the number one buyers of oil globally, countries like China and to a lesser extent, India and others, are just not growing at the same rate that would warrant that $150 beautiful magic spot the oil industry wants. It's just not going to get there when you have 46% GDP growth rates in China, for example.

10:20 a.m.

Conservative

David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

How do you see Turkey playing into this relationship? Obviously there is the whole Kurdish issue played out through the Daesh activity. We've spent quite a bit of time at the subcommittee on human rights talking about the Yazidi situation and the problems faced in the Nineveh plains, but how do you see Turkish relations with the United States playing into this relationship you are talking about as well?

10:20 a.m.

Professor, University of Waterloo, As an Individual

Dr. Bessma Momani

Again, a few weeks ago I would have been more confident in an analysis because the U.S.-Turkish relationship really had General Flynn at the centre of it, and Flynn, as we all know, has now been discredited. Flynn had worked for the Turks as a contractor, but it seems he had also promised Erdogan and others in Turkey that they would snatch and grab Gülen, who is this hated, self-proclaimed preacher viewed by the Turkish establishment as a terrorist behind the July coup of last year, so it seemed as though the Turks were befriending Flynn, and therefore we saw some mild support of Trump for that.

Of course with Flynn out of the mix, it's really hard to tell. Trump and Erdogan are supposed to meet very soon. It is going to be really interesting to watch that because, of course, Turkey is a vital ally in the fight against ISIS. The U.S. needs Turkey to ensure that the border stays secure, that supplies don't go to ISIS as before. The border was not the priority of Turkey until we saw a lot of weapons slip through. Of course, for Turkey, it's all about refugees and trying to find allies who support its bid to have these refugees financed by the global community and support its efforts to continue the fight against the Kurds in the south, so it's mixed.

Lastly, Trump has been very supportive of the Kurds, at least in rhetoric. He doesn't really recognize that there are Kurds everywhere, so his love of Kurds in Iraq, for example, in the peshmerga, doesn't necessarily mean there is love for Turkish Kurds or Syrian Kurds but there is often that misinterpretation by the Turkish government and the Kurds themselves.

10:20 a.m.

Conservative

David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

Thank you.

10:20 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bob Nault

Mr. McKay.