Thank you very much.
First I'd like to thank all of you for the vitally important work you're doing. I think that all of us as parliamentarians look at what's happening in Afghanistan with great alarm. The word “crisis” is not even strong enough. Thank you so much.
I'd like to start with Ms. Gashem because you have come to us with some very concrete, tangible things that we can do, such as virtual learning. I think that's very helpful for our recommendations.
I'd like to go to the resettling in Canada. I know that Canada opened up, through the special program, 40,000 spaces. I think we've settled over 27,000 already. I hear you on the speed of that.
There's one thing I wanted to ask, because we had over a million emails, a million applicants, for those 40,000 spaces. When we opened up 3,000 spaces in October for people who were outside of Afghanistan but couldn't get refugee status, the quota was reached in the first day that they were opened up. The magnitude of this problem is overwhelming. I look at things like seeing MP Mursal Nabizada assassinated and the plight of other human rights defenders and members of parliament.
We created, as a result of this committee, a human rights defenders stream of immigration. It was created at only 250 per year. To identify people, we did it through partners such as UNHCR, Front Line Defenders and ProtectDefenders. I'm wondering about scaling up something like that, specifically targeting human rights defenders who are known. I mean, organizations on the ground know who they are. If that could be scaled up, working through partners, as some of you suggested, that might be an easier and better way to try target the people who are most in danger.
I'm going to put that first to Ms. Gashem and then ask everybody else to answer. Keep in consideration that we have only a few minutes.
Go ahead, Ms. Gashem.