Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Defence.
Yesterday, the Canadian government chose to give up its leadership regarding a humanitarian mission to eastern Zaire. The Minister of Foreign Affairs said that the crisis had shifted to inside Rwanda where the problem now was the resettlement of refugees returning home. For his part, the defence minister announced yesterday the cancellation of the Canadian-led mission and questioned whether last week's highly publicized plan to air drop food would go ahead.
Are we to understand that the Canadian government has given up on eastern Zaire where, according to the UN envoy, some 300,000 refugees are still trapped, to concentrate its efforts solely on the resettlement of refugees who are returning to Rwanda?