Mr. Speaker, I know the personnel at the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Privy Council Office and CIDA worked exceptionally hard. People pulled 18 hour days and had very little sleep. We want to compliment the bureaucrats who often do not get any thanks but who in this case deserve enormous praise for the hard work they did.
What my colleague is referring to are the actions by the Minister of Foreign Affairs which were late. The elected officials in the government, unfortunately, let the department down in not exerting and exercising the leadership it should have had in the situation. I hope it learned a lesson.
My colleague worked very hard to try to convince the government to act with speed on this. While officials in foreign affairs and CIDA were doing their very best, there was an absence of leadership at the top. We hope the government has learned its lesson from this and that it will be able to implement some of the solutions it has heard here.
I implore the government to implement these solutions that I mentioned in my speech. They could save a lot of lives and it would be a niche area of capability that our country and the government could champion. At the end of the day we will save a lot of lives. I know we can do that with leadership.