Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.
Six weeks after the referendum in East Timor, no Canadian soldiers have yet joined the implementation force on the ground. Our soldiers are still waiting for their inoculations, which they were late receiving, to take effect.
How does the Deputy Prime Minister explain such a delay, when the Minister of Foreign Affairs himself was warned by NGOs returning from East Timor that there would be a blood bath? He was warned as early as February 22. How does he explain the delay?