Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm very familiar with Alex Neve. I have worked very closely with Amnesty. I've been on the other end of Amnesty's lawsuits against the Government of Canada as well. I'm very much aware of expressed concerns, but I would ask Alex Neve to point exactly to the language that has changed. I could express any kind of concern that I have, and as a person I could do that any day--get out of bed and express a concern. But I would like Alex Neve to actually point to that.
I've just read you language coming out of the mouth of a minister in which he uses the language that this government uses. Alex Neve knows exactly what the meaning of “international humanitarian law” is. It is the law of war. It's the corpus of law that we use, the governance structure that we use in Afghanistan and other places. The term “international law” is much more general.
So I'm very much aware of that. I would ask, if there's anybody who has a specific example to point to, then please provide it to me. But pure conjecture and hyperbole...I can't work with that.
With respect to the other issues of “child soldiers” versus “children in armed conflict”, I think I expressed clearly that “child soldiers” is a colloquial term. The correct term that we use, which is in the actual international instrument, is “children in armed conflict”. Maybe it's just the lawyer in me that likes to use the exact terminology that we negotiated, because everybody agreed to it, all 180 cats that we had to herd in the same direction. When you start using other terms, it makes the lawyer in me just a wee bit nervous. If you wish to use whatever term you like, please feel free. But the Government of Canada will use the language that was negotiated and that we find consistent throughout international discussions and instruments.
I'm not sure if there's another issue that I had to deal with.
On the issue of impunity, actually I'm also at a loss to see where there is a difference between language and what we're doing. I think I also read to you specific press releases and the voices of the ministers where they talk about “bringing perpetrators to justice”. I think impunity and bringing perpetrators to justice are essentially the same thing. So I think yet again I'm a little bit at sea on where the difference is.