My understanding is that generally this committee is operated on consensus, so I don't have these as motions because I think it's better to just put them out as ideas, but if we find a substantial degree of consensus, and we can establish at this meeting that we want to start on a few themes, then that way we don't have to spend unnecessary time in committee business discussion.
There are two ideas that I want to put on the table. The first is that there's a lot of growing interest and concern about the human rights situation in India. I don't think we have dealt with issues in the past at the subcommittee around the citizenship law and recent communal violence. Just given the large South Asian diaspora communities here in Canada, there is a lot of interest in that, and there's a particular opportunity for Canadian engagement on that.
At the same time, the criticism is always that, if we talk about human rights in India, why aren't we talking about Pakistan? I wonder if we could establish that as an area of focus on human rights in South Asia. We could look at minority rights and other human rights issues in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as well. There are growing concerns about that. We could have a few meetings on each. It would give us an opportunity both to talk about some of the specific issues and specific countries and also to look at whether there are broader regional trends. Again, I think the way Canada is seen through these diaspora connections creates some good opportunities for us to have a voice maybe in a region that we haven't been as engaged with in the past on some of the human rights stuff. That's one idea.
My other idea is that there's a lot of discussion in this committee and elsewhere about the question of genocide and genocide recognition. I think we could do a study here specifically about Canada's mechanisms for genocide recognition and response. Are we equipped to identify early warning signs of genocide? How do we go about recognizing past or present genocides? What are the processes within our government triggered by a declaration? I think that, just by looking at how we identify and respond to genocide at a general level, we could do some really good work. Rather than just looking at specific cases, we could evaluate that as a broader topic.