We've provided to the Office of Religious Freedom some $800,000 to assist religious minorities. One of the key elements in the values that we promote abroad in the department under this government is religious freedom. That, in many ways, exemplifies the pluralism that we have built in Canada, where people of different faiths can live in peace and harmony and build a strong country together.
This is one of the real breakdowns that we see in Iraq, where you have a central government that has not governed for all Iraqis in the past. They've made significant progress in recent months. A lot more work remains to be done, but I think they're going in the right direction.
The reports of Christians, Yazidis, and Shia being summarily executed in large numbers horrified the world. This is I think one of the important areas where Canada's voice and our action can play a constructive role. That's why we established the Office of Religious Freedom.
I think the same could be said within Syria, where we had real concerns a number of years ago whether a new government represented by the opposition, should Assad fall, would govern for the whole country and govern in a pluralist way. We initially had concerns that they might single out and target religious minorities, you know, and with large parts of the opposition we now have a concern that religious minorities could face slaughter, so this is a tremendously important issue for us. This is why Canada was one of the only major western countries that didn't recognize the Syrian opposition as the sole and legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
Obviously, those same concerns unfortunately are manifesting themselves with ISIL in Iraq. Religious freedom is important. Pluralism is, I think, a tremendous gift that Canada can promote around the world.