Thank you.
To address the issue raised by Ms. Duncan, I think the Arms Trade Treaty is going to go a long way to prevent the diversion of weapons, particularly in areas like DRC.
My question goes to His Excellency Ambassador Simard and deals with the upcoming elections in the DRC.
I ran a program to promote dialogue between the political parties in the 2011 elections. We know that the elections were neither credible, nor transparent, nor fair. I was Country Director of the National Democratic Institute, the NDI. Now, I see exactly the same thing going on with the electoral records and the proposed voting machines, which contravene the law. How can we prevent the same problem from happening in this election?
I see that you have provided $10 million to increase voter participation. The last time, I proposed spending $100,000 to train observers for the political parties, but now, there are no observers.
After the election, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) gave $3 million to conduct an audit, but it was not able to be done for lack of evidence. Could Canada use those funds to train observers for the political parties, networks of women and clerics? There are networks that can do that in each little village.
If we do not know what the results of the vote look like, it is very difficult to say afterwards whether it was fair or not. At the moment, I am afraid that Mr. Kabila will put obstacles in the way of the international observers. He does not want humanitarian aid, and I believe that the observers will be blocked.
Would it be possible to begin the process now by making use of those funds?