Thank you. My apologies for that. I had to transition to be a bit closer to the House, because I have a speech in a moment.
We see that this authoritarian trend puts on right-wing clothing, it puts on left-wing clothing and it puts on centrist clothing in certain countries. It justifies itself very often in terms of ethnic nationalism, but drawing from all different parts of a conventional right/left economic and political spectrum.
I think we know this. I think we see the authoritarianism of the regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, China and Belarus. We see the human rights abuses perpetrated by the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia. It seems like an odd enterprise to try to classify as “right-wing” or “left-wing”, according to our own understanding of those terms, the authoritarian trends and human rights abuses that are taking place in some of these countries.
I think Mr. Chong has made that point well. He has alluded to best practices recommended by CSIS. In response to that, Mr. Fonseca said that, well, we hear the media use the term “right-wing extremism”. I don't know if that's really true. There may be some media that use this terminology, but there may be other media that use different terminology. Even if what he said is correct, I think we should be more motivated by the best practices coming from CSIS to correctly classify the kinds of extremism we're talking about.
At the end of the day, based on what has been said so far, I don't have a sense of what in particular, in three meetings, we would study, with a limited possibility of witnesses we would hear from, of course, in just three meetings, or what the scope would be. I think you could identify a few specific ideological movements. You could identify a few specific countries or a few specific organizations that you might want to study in the time prescribed, but this is a big catch-all, with an ideological buzzer attached to it that doesn't fit.
I would suggest that, first of all, we adopt the amendment, and then we take a bit of a step back. We have a full agenda for the next few meetings. We can have discussions at the subcommittee on agenda and procedure and say that there's some merit to the ideas here. Let's figure out if we want to look specifically at violent movements that identify with national socialism. Do we want to look at two or three particular countries that are moving in an authoritarian direction? Do we want to look at one particular group of victims mentioned in the motion? Do we want to look particularly at persecution against LGBTQ+ people? Do we want to identify some category of violence or state—