Thank you, Dr. Zawati, for being here.
I wanted to give credit where credit is due as well in this regard. It's a tragic situation with so many hundreds of thousands of people dead and displaced. The neighbouring countries are taking a lot of the burden. One of the countries that I visited recently is Jordan, which has now absorbed over one and a half million Syrian refugees. We had an opportunity to see the Jordanian border guard service, which is doing an exemplary job maintaining security. Of course, they have some real concerns about extremists, and they've had some who have tried to sneak into Jordan in the guise of refugees. They have done a great job, as a military force, providing humanitarian aid as well as trying to secure their own country because they have their own concerns, obviously, sharing their border with Syria.
Canada has invested substantially there to make sure that Jordan continues to be a safe place where Syrian refugees can go, and even for their children to be educated. We inspected the ambulances and transport trucks that are used to take these refugees to the camps in order to try and get them back to some kind of normalized life after the experience of violence they had gone through.
I can assure you, too, that the people in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration are working very hard to make sure that we can reach the target that we set for our commitment. I know that I will be encouraging any kind of review that we can undertake for any kind of other capability for absorbing refugees.
I'd like to ask you a question. It seems to me from your testimony that you're inferring that the primary perpetrator of the sexual violence has been the Assad regime. It's our understanding from other testimony that extremist elements have really co-opted what was an uprising of people against that regime and now there are extremists who are guilty of the same thing involved on other sides of the conflict.
Can you respond to that, please?