Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, in respect of how we're going to proceed, I think this committee does incredible and valuable work and that all of us generally care about human rights. I think that's one of the reasons we all wanted to be on this committee.
Unfortunately, as you will see, the work that goes on here rarely makes it to Parliament, to the House. It stays at the foreign affairs committee, because we're only a subcommittee. It's not going to be easy to get around that. Our goal should be for this committee to become a full standing committee.
In the meantime, there are some valuable things we can do. One is to offer ourselves as committee members whenever there are distinguished human rights individuals such as Shirin Ebadi. We should offer to meet with her as a committee. I think this is a great forum in which to highlight some of the human rights violations taking place in her country. She's a great spokesperson for women's rights and for the people of Iran, where many atrocities are taking place. She's definitely a person worth meeting with.
There are going to be other dignitaries in the area from time to time, and we should also make ourselves available to them. I think it's useful to provide this testimony, this witnessing, this recounting of stories. We need to let the public know what's taking place. So I would hope that we use these opportunities wisely.
As for our work, I don't think we should be going into it any further. As I think Jason mentioned, these long-term, one-year studies like we did on China, as valuable as they are, become problematic if we can't get them to the House and make them public. Maybe we should focus on smaller issues. This way we would be able to broaden our scope.
I know Irwin mentioned anti-Semitism. I think that's a great idea if we can do it. We could also focus on Omar Khadr and other ad hoc issues. I think this would be useful for the committee, because we would get a chance to get it on the record. It would become public. This way we don't have to worry about long reports that may not ever be tabled in the House, and we get our views out to the public.