Mr. Chair, I share many of the concerns of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. I too am very concerned about the situation and how it is evolving. Things are not getting better; they are getting worse.
Having travelled to Cairo myself and having spent some time in the Coptic community and having been very welcomed, I am particularly concerned about friends that I have there. It is a truly wonderful community. At the same time, I felt hope with the changes in Egypt, as well as great disappointment when the situation got worse. I agree with the parliamentary secretary that it is a characteristic of any modern democracy that one of its litmus tests is how it treats its minorities, whether they be linguistic, ethnic or religious.
I am sure our government has been in touch with certain powers in Egypt and I would like to know, very specifically, what the government is doing in its communications with representatives of that military government in order to push this issue forward and keep further massacres from occurring.