Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses for joining us here today. I appreciate their presence here. I'm sorry for the late start, but that's the way life is around here.
I'm going to start with the Afghan interpreters.
I had the pleasure to sit on the Special Committee on Afghanistan just a bit ago. Sally Armstrong, a Canadian journalist, was at the committee and was speaking about the horrors that she had experienced first-hand in helping refugees and others to get out of the country to Canada. I asked her about a comment I've heard from different people: that there's a risk that if we bring in people from Afghanistan too quickly, we might get some terrorists in Canada. Her response was:
You could say that with every single refugee program we've ever instigated. The terrorists are running Afghanistan; they're not trying to come here. I think that is a very poor and weak and wrong conclusion to draw in the face of vulnerable people who need us to help them.
I want to ask Mr. Khan and Mr. Faizi both to comment on this.
Do you agree with her conclusion that when the government labels people coming out of Afghanistan as potential terrorists, they're politicizing and reiterating stereotypes that people might have of Muslim people, for example?