Thank you, Mr. Chair, and Ms. LaViolette.
We are all shocked and saddened by the murder of David Kato. I think one of the things that we need to do here in this committee is to make sure the viewing public understands that Rolling Stone is not the Rolling Stone music magazine of North America. There are times that a statement in this place can be misconstrued, so I thought it was worth saying that.
Many of the persons identified in this article are now internally displaced persons. As you know, they don't qualify now; they have to get out of the country. I think much of our law was based on the idea of some kind of internal conflict, such as a war, or something that people are running from in order to get the protection of Canada.
You've also expressed concern about the Nairobi mission and the very slow processing time. I can vouch for that. In my office, we see a lot of people trying to reunify their families. It's one of the hardest places to deal with among any that my staff get to work with.
However, I have graver concerns that come from previous testimony. There is a grave fear that in the mission there are people who are homophobic, and that even going there is putting people at risk. I gather from your testimony that you're actually suggesting something we more or less thought about as a committee, which is to put in place some kind of special system--a short-term ministerial prerogative, I would suggest--that in a case like this would apply when we have identified people. We're not clear, though, on how many actually want to leave the country. There are some brave souls who want to stay there and try to change their country, so we have to be careful of that.
We have a crisis now at two levels. We have the immediate crisis that we have to respond to, in my opinion. I'm embarrassed to find out that they're turning away from Canada because it's just too hard to get here, when we're one of the leading countries on the face of this earth on these particular rights. It's very troubling. Also, the long-term change.... I've heard no evidence so far that Canada has intervened politically in any fashion on the situation. I don't know whether you have any indication of that.
I want to thank you for your testimony and the suggestions you made. They're very helpful to us.
I'll turn it back to you.