I would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to be here and to share with you our frustrations.
As an Iraqi Canadian, I have a personal story to tell you. My cousin, a female lawyer, left Iraq under the threat of the militias and the civil war taking place in Iraq, as you may know. She went to Jordan hoping that she could come to Canada, but she failed. She could stay there just for two days. As you may know, there are no settlement programs as we have here. There was no guidance, no direction on where she could go and to whom she could speak. But that's just a personal story that I'm sharing with you.
We as Iraqis would like the Canadian government to exercise some political pressure on the Iraqi and American governments to take full responsibility for the displaced Iraqi people by allocating some of Iraq's oil revenue to the basic needs of the displaced persons--internally and outside, such as Syria and Jordan--as suggested by the Iraq International Initiative.
As well, we would like the Canadian government to help the host countries with funds and expedite the process of immigration, especially for the individuals who have families here, as Martin stated earlier.
Most of the things I was going to say have been mentioned by Martin. I would love to hear your questions, and hopefully I can answer them.
Thank you.