Thank you, Chair. I want to say that you're doing an excellent job of moving things along, but I'd be remiss if I didn't also say that I've been to this committee several times, and I wanted to recognize the work of the former chair as well and to wish him well in his new responsibilities at the UN.
I'm very glad to be here and speaking about this today, because I have five main themes to cover on why I really think that this committee needs to use the precious committee time that's left to focus on Ukraine.
Everyone is aware of the war that's happening between Russia and Ukraine, but I want you to know that in my riding of Sarnia—Lambton we have people who have actually gone over to Ukraine and are on the ground in Ukraine, as well as in the surrounding countries. They're at Medica, and I know my colleague across the way, Mr. Ehsassi, was there with another one of my colleagues.
There are folks from my riding who are there and who have set up stations to help the Ukrainians who are fleeing the country. The various churches in my area have missions; they actually created churches and orphanages and all kinds of things in Ukraine years ago, so there are still people there who are giving us a daily update on what's happening. Our entire community—many organizations—has reached out. We're trying to bring about 100 families to Sarnia—Lambton.
I'm certainly seeing on a daily basis the urgency of the situation. It has been three months. The war is not getting better. It's getting worse. We're seeing a number of things that are not going well and a number of areas where there are gaps that need to be addressed. Also, then, we see an escalation. Those are the things I really want to talk about today.
Now, in terms of the efforts in my riding, I could tell you many stories, but really, let's talk first of all about the people who are on the ground in Ukraine and the situation there. People are without electricity, and some are without water. We've all heard and seen the various social media tapings of people who are in the subway stations underground and of the constant bombings and everything else, so you know it's urgent.
I think that is one of the main reasons this committee needs to focus on the situation and address it.
At the same time, there are six million people who have left the country in the hopes of going somewhere. The problem is, it's really taking way too long to get them out of there.
There's this one lady, Tanya, with two kids. She was in Ukraine. We have a place for her in my riding, so she had to leave with her two kids on a Saturday to go to Warsaw to get her biometrics. It ended up that the embassy wasn't open on Sunday, and then on Monday the system went down because of the overload from everybody applying. It was the same thing on Tuesday. On Wednesday, she gets told that she can have a biometrics appointment in a month. Well, what is she supposed to do with two kids in Warsaw with no money for a month?
That is certainly something that the government needs to address. They exempted children from the biometrics requirement, which is great, but I don't know any mother who is going to send her children off to Canada, where they don't speak the language, without having—