Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses.
As I was listening to the testimony at the beginning, I was thinking about the case of the MS St. Louis, which was a ship of Jewish Holocaust refugees who were turned away from Canada. In my time as a parliamentarian, we had an official apology delivered by the Prime Minister for Canada's lack of willingness to receive these fleeing refugees.
At the same time, we've been talking about this issue of the need for a special program to help vulnerable Afghan minorities for the entirety of the time I've been a parliamentarian—since 2015. I think there is a significant frustration among many people, as we've heard tonight, about the lack of action.
I gave my first member's statement in the House in December of 2015 on this very issue, calling for the creation of a special program under section 25 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. I think it's important to underscore that the letter Balpreet Singh mentioned that was signed by MPs in support of a special program under section 25 was also signed by our leader.
Our immigration shadow minister Jasraj Singh Hallan has personally been involved in sponsoring an Afghan Sikh family and did so before being an elected official. It's been a long time, though. Although some families from India have been helped, as we've heard tonight, we know the mechanism—a special program under section 25 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act—would allow direct sponsorship from Afghanistan to Canada, yet it just hasn't happened. We continue to call for that to take place. It's so necessary. I don't know why it hasn't happened.
I want to start with a question for Balpreet Singh.
Could you clarify whether the government has given you an outright “no” to the possibility of a section 25 program or whether they simply haven't answered the question?
Secondly, could you just speak to other precedents you're aware of where special programs under section 25 have been used successfully for other communities?