Mr. Speaker, congratulations on your new post. I would be remiss if I did not begin by congratulating the hon. member on his courageous stand with respect to Falun Gong. I know his work has saved the life of at least one individual and has brought the attention and attraction of the international community on this terrible situation.
The points that he articulates about human rights abuses, torture, the rights of children and conflict are well known. The amount of conflict taking place in the world today has been exploding over the last few years. The international community has been ill able to deal with this in a preventive fashion. I was very happy and encouraged to see in the throne speech an explicit reference to the prevention of deadly conflict.
Many of the things we have seen that the hon. member mentioned in his speech about abuses to children, torture, et cetera, are products of conflict in many cases, so I will confine my comments and questions to that.
Will the hon. member and his government look at international organizations and how we can prevent conflict? Will he advocate conditionality on World Bank activities in certain countries such as Tibet, Chad and Angola? Will he put pressure on companies in the international communities and countries to ensure that their resources will be applied to primary health and education instead of war efforts?
I cite the specific example of Angola. It receives a $3.5 billion infusion of capital every year from international organizations and companies while their people are living in abject poverty and are dying. One-third of the children in Angola die before the age of five.
Will he fight for conditionality in loans from the World Bank, in actions by the IMF, and in CIDA's activities internationally?