Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
On that previous testimony, I want to reassure members of the committee and those watching that Canada does not support Iran for positions of influence in the United Nations.
I really appreciate that we have some incredible human rights defenders here today. I'd like to pick up on what some of you have said.
Mr. Sharifi, you said something profound. You said that “human rights defenders are not beneficiaries. They are partners.” I'd also like to go to Ms. Hassan, who said that global networks are essential infrastructure.
With lot of democracy funding being cut quite rapidly for things like the World Movement for Democracy—primarily from south of the border, but elsewhere as well—we see that the connective tissue for a lot of these networks of human rights defenders around the world has been broken. Human rights defenders are isolated, and this puts them in much greater danger. I know that Equitas has some data about the situation now, and if we don't have time, I'd love for you to table it with the committee.
It makes me think about my family in World War II. They were in the Dutch underground resistance. Many of you mentioned security. There's no way we could have won World War II with just the soldiers and the Allies. We had to have the connections that were made with the underground resistance movements that were happening there. The human rights defenders who are fighting autocracy, who are fighting for democracy, are really that resistance. If we want a world in which we will retain our democracy, making common cause and supporting those defenders is as important as it was in the 1940s.
I wonder if I could get comment from you on how Canada and other countries around the world—because this is an international subcommittee—can help to connect human rights defenders to one another and to us, so that they're not working in fragmented ways, as I think one of you said.
I'll start with Equitas. Then I'm hoping to have time for each of you, but we can always continue in another round.