Mr. Speaker, as the foreign affairs critic of the official opposition, the Canadian Alliance, I asked a question today. In his response, the Deputy Prime Minister gave some information which, in my view, did not justify the situation. I would like this clarified so that the Deputy Prime Minister can retract the baseless information and the wrong premise that was said about me.
Before the last election, one newspaper, which did not do the proper research, published some comments about me in the newspaper. I contacted the newspaper and, at the same time, I contacted the ambassador of Liberia to Canada. The ambassador wrote a letter to me justifying the truth and giving the information surrounding the circumstances. Thereafter, I contacted the newspaper. The newspaper confessed that its research was not right and it verbally retracted the information.
I would like the House, and the media, which are not doing their research properly, to know that I was an assistant professor of management at the University of Liberia. As an assistant professor, I had absolutely no connection with the government. The ambassador's letter indicates that for one to participate or get involved in Liberian politics, one has to be a Negro by origin. That is what the ambassador wrote in the letter and I have a copy of it.
Lastly, I had a business which dealt with agricultural products. People in that country were dying of hunger because they did not have enough food to eat. I wrote a letter to the president of the country, simply to launch a green revolution. I wanted them to invest in the soil so that people could be self-sufficient in producing food, which would alleviate poverty, malnutrition and hunger. Is that a crime? I would suggest—