Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Sherbrooke for his question.
We did go to Colombia and met trade unionists and human rights advocates. These are very brave people who have often received death threats. Occasionally there have been attempts to kill them or members of their families. They all said that this would do nothing to improve the situation in Colombia. As I said earlier, it will only make things worse. That is crystal clear.
Insofar as government assistance is concerned, CIDA is doing good work with limited resources, as we saw in Soacha. If the government is sincere and really wants to improve things for Colombia’s poor, it should increase CIDA’s current funding for refugees, people who have been driven from their land and find themselves absolutely destitute in shanty towns all across Colombia.