Thank you very much for the question.
I just wanted to ensure that everybody was on the same wavelength as to how to best express Canadian policy as made by the minister.
I think it might be helpful, because we've been talking about this specific issue on the DRC and international and humanitarian law, for example, to explain how this conversation was taking place, because I think some of the process here is being lost.
In regard to what happened in this case, there are various ways in which a letter will come to the minister. It's assigned to the minister's correspondence unit. It's then sent down to the experts--in this case, it would have been the person who was working on the desk for the DRC--to draft a response.
The response comes back up to the minister's correspondence unit. It's discussed with the minister's office. They will look at it. They may have some questions about some of the language. They may have some questions about some of the terminology.
In this case, what they did was send it back. They made some suggestions; for example, could we change “international humanitarian law” to just “international law”? This was sent back to the division. That was how the discussion took place.
The meeting was one way for us to bring all the officials together to make sure that we were all aware that we were dealing with the same questions and to provide our best advice to the minister's office. There were follow-up meetings afterward.
Directly after this meeting that is referred to in the e-mail, I spoke with the minister's office and explained to them how we were looking at these terms. There were follow-up conversations with the minister's office, specifically, for example, on the term “international humanitarian law” which explained what the difference is between referring to “international humanitarian law” and referring to “international law”. It was well taken on board. You will see, for example, in recent press releases, the term “international humanitarian law”.