Thank you so much.
Good afternoon, honourable chair and members of the committee. I just wanted to start off by thanking all of you for the really important work you do. I know recently you had a study on Bill S-211, and it's now awaiting third reading. We really appreciate all of the hard work.
Today, we are here to talk about the earthquake that happened just over a week ago.
I'm here to represent the more than 85,000 injured people who no longer have a home. I'm here to represent all those we lost.
I'm here to represent our courageous staff members, both in Turkey and Syria, who've been living there, are nationals over there, and many of whom have lost their own family members. One of our staff members lost 32 members of his extended family, yet after burying them, with so much courage, patience and a sense of community service, he is back distributing aid to those who have survived.
I'm also here to represent the 21,000 Canadians across the country who have donated to Islamic Relief Canada, and the many more tens of thousands who have donated to our various partners of the Humanitarian Coalition. Canadians across the country have seen the images and the videos on social media and in the media, and they're deeply impacted by what those in Turkey and Syria are going through. I'm here to represent the concerns they have and the expectations they have of public officials, elected officials, from all sides of the aisle.
As you know, the epicentre of the earthquake was in Turkey. I was in Gaziantep a few years ago. The southern parts of Turkey have hosted millions of Syrian refugees who have escaped a decade of civil war and conflict. The infrastructure in Turkey has been well established and their disaster risk readiness is well established, so hours after the earthquake they were able to bring excavators and construction vehicles to start digging.
However, because of the constant air strikes, many of the buildings in Syria were already unstable. More than 3.3 million people in northwest Syria have already been displaced, and not just once but multiple times. There is a lost generation of children who haven't been able to go to school.
They didn't have construction vehicles or bulldozers to respond to the cries they heard from their family members. I was speaking to our head of mission of Syria yesterday, and he was telling stories about people being able to hear their family members but not being able to move rocks and rubble to help save them.
As you know, the constant fear of air strikes, the lack of health infrastructure and the recent outbreak of cholera all make this incredibly difficult for the Syrians in the northwest and throughout Syria. There were access issues to get aid into Syria in the first few days after the disaster. The only border crossing between Turkey and Syria was closed. That has recently opened. Just yesterday we heard about the UN facilitating the opening of a few more access points from Turkey to Syria.
Our local staff in both Turkey and Syria have been operating there for more than a decade. We have warehouses in Syria. We have procurement supplies that we solicit in Syria. We have banking mechanisms to ensure that funding can be spent on people in a reliable way through our local staff members. We have more than 600 project staff and more than 60 permanent management staff in Syria coordinating all of our aid efforts.
The asks, I think, are primarily for funding.
The Canadian government has announced $10 million and a $10-million matching fund for the Red Cross. As my colleague Richard Morgan has said, it's imperative that the government announce an extension of the matching fund through the Humanitarian Coalition. The 12 agencies will be able to go to their donor base and the general public to incentivize Canadians to continue to step up after this news goes off the news cycle and off our social media feeds. Unfortunately, the needs will be very long term in terms of shelter and rebuilding infrastructure and livelihoods.
We ask for a more direct funding commitment from the government. We ask for a matching fund. We ask that in the upcoming budget there not be a decrease in the ODA and the development portfolio. We understand that Canada itself is facing a potential economic recession and rising inflation. However, there's an imperative that we step up and continue to help those around the world.
Last, we ask this committee to take an interest in the underlying crisis in Syria, ensure that more humanitarian corridors are open and use our soft power with our multilateral partners and the UN to push for a resolution of the 10-year-old civil war.
Thank you so much.