Thank you, Mr. Marston.
To be honest, when it comes to talking of numbers of how many gays and lesbians will try to make their way here, I can't put a number to how many would come over. For us who are able to make it here, in our group, there are already 70 of us, and there are those who are out there as well, so we can put the number so far at probably 150 in Canada.
The 200 who have made requests...and there are others who are adamant about not making requests because they don't think we will be able to do anything. We were clear to them and told them that we are just a social group. We are not that organization with funding and everything, because it involves a lot of work. When we received those many requests we were challenged to do something, and we wanted to get results. We didn't know what to expect. We were surprised with the responses we got from the Prime Minister's Office, the Foreign Affairs office, and even to hear from the committee. We were really surprised by the responses. To make the situation more....appealing, I sent some photographs, which I requested to be private, to show how dire the situation is.
The number? That is unknown. For now I'm looking at the 200. If we can accomplish the mission of bringing the 200, then we'll have opened that door for the remaining 500, or 5,000. Probably the mission in Kenya will look favourably on those individuals who make applications on their sexuality. Again, there are some horror stories about the mission itself in Kenya, yes.